The Sanders team keeps bringing up the possibility of a contested convention, which by their reckoning may or may not happen:
“We’ve mapped out a path to victory in our campaign in terms of delegates — pledged delegates — and we don’t have to win everywhere, but we do have to win most of the states coming up,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told MSNBC on Tuesday. “So there’s no one state that’s a must-win, and as we look forward we’re gonna be able to accumulate the delegates we need to get the pledged delegate lead by the end of this primary and caucus process.”
But, there seems to be the very real possibility that a scenario is emerging which is simply a bit of a fluke of history & timing.
In the first place, Bernie’s upward trajectory in national Democratic preference polls has been pretty consistent. If anything, he becomes more popular as time goes on, as people get to know him better, as this recent AP/Gfk Poll indicates.
Plus, if one projects according the RCP average of national Democratic preference polls, by the time the convention rolls around, which is still over 3 months from now, we could very well be looking at a Democratic party which prefers Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton by 15% or more. Add to that the fact that Sanders’ is already beating Trump by 20% to Clinton’s 9% (RCP). That lead could very well approach (it’s very possible) 30% by nomination day.
So, even if Hillary is indeed leading Bernie by 100-150 delegates, out of 4050, that difference could quite possibly seem statistically quite insignificant in the face of Sanders’ “Big Mo”.
In three months, the mere fact of the US electorate having come to vastly prefer Senator Sanders over the once inevitable Mrs. Clinton, may have simply become impossible to avoid.