Barring a cataclysm of Armageddon like magnitude Hillary Clinton is going to the the Democratic nominee for President at the convention in July. But how the hell did this happen? Bernie Sanders has won 20 states, and he’s within 3M popular votes of Clinton. How can he be out of the running even before California’s delegate rich primary on June 7? It turns out that the answer is quite simple, and it was over early. The source of her large pledged delegate lead can be traced back to one fateful month. The month of March.
NBCNews.com has a very informative article that delves into the numbers. And on reflection, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising, but as the the actual results came in on different days, and often in conjunction with multiple primaries on the same day, the forest got lost in the trees. Right now Hillary Clinton has a 277 pledged delegate lead over rival Bernie Sanders. Remember that 277 number for a minute. Here are the pertinent primary results in March as listed in the article;
- On March 1, Clinton beat Sanders in Georgia, 71%-28%,netting a gain of 44 delegates (73-29)
- On March 1, Clinton beat Sanders in Texas, 65%-33%, netting 72 delegates (147-75)
- On March 15, Clinton beat Sanders in Florida, 64%-33%, netting 68 delegates (141-73)
- On April 19, Clinton beat Sanders in New York, 58%-42%, netting 31 delegates (139-108)
- On April 26, Clinton beat Sanders in Maryland, 63%-33%, netting 27 delegates (61-34)
If you add up the delegates, those five races gave Clinton a bulge of 242 delegates, the vast majority of her current lead of 277. And as the article went on to note, there is something else significant those five states have in common. They are all states with significant minority populations. Sanders inability to make inroads with minority communities, whether because his message wasn’t resonating, or simply because of the Clinton entrenched history with those minorities really doesn’t matter. It was fatal to his campaign.
But what about those 20 states, and Sanders long winning streak? Simple math tells the tale there too, and it’s not pretty;
By contrast, Sanders' recent victories in Indiana (+5 gain in delegates), West Virginia (+7), and Oregon (+6 so far) produced a smaller combined gain (+19) than what Clinton got out of Maryland by itself (+27).
So, there’s the rub. Sanders has indeed won a large number of states, but they weren’t rich enough in delegates, and he wasn’t able to post blowout victories to help him make up the deficit Clinton opened up back in March. The proportional delegate allocations shielded Clinton’s lead. As the article noted, his richest delegate haul was in Washington State (+47), but he hasn’t had anywhere near enough of those nights to help him really bore into the huge lead that Clinton built up in March.
Mathematically Clinton put away the nomination in March. Like a basketball team who is up by 25 in the third quarter, all she had to do was score when the opportunity was there, don’t fall prey to a “comeback run”, and run out the clock. Although I have no insider knowledge or information in the campaign, I feel that as April played out, the Clinton campaign did the math, and that’s when she started to gently disengage from Sanders and the primary and started to look at Trump and the general election. Even if Sanders blows her out in North and South Dakota, there aren’t enough delegates at stake to make a sizable dent in her lead. And California is a state with a large minority population, which is what cost Sanders so dearly in the March primaries.
If you’re wondering why it took so long to figure this out, there are two probable reasons. First, it is becoming more and more generally accepted that the race is over, now the pundits are starting to do their autopsies, looking for the critical dates and events. Second, the media survives on viewership. Coming out on April 1st with the math, and showing that the race was already probably pretty much decided based on the math, what would have happened to their Primary night election coverage?
So, as we see once again, what often looks like a complex machine, with many moving and changeable parts can sometimes be broken down to a simple lever and fulcrum.
Thanks as always for reading!