After Wisconsin, Sanders is worse off than ever in the delegate race
Before Wisconsin voted, Sanders was already well behind Clinton in the delegate race. That means that to beat her, he needed to not only beat her in the remaining states but beat her badly to cut into her delegate lead. How badly?
Nate Silver produced a great series of estimates based on the demographic composition of each state. The result was not a likely scenario in which Sanders caught Clinton, but rather the most plausible one he could think of. It gave Sanders a target of securing 50 of Wisconsin's 86 delegates by scoring a 16 percentage point margin of victory. Ambitious, but doable.
He came close, but he didn't do it. And that means he'll have another delegate or two he needs to add in future races.
Because the five largest states — California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois — all have above-average black and Latino populations, most states have below-average black and Latino populations. Because of that, Sanders is well-positioned to win a large number of states that have few residents and assign few delegates. He happens to have benefited from a small run in the calendar that featured a whole bunch of these states.
Next up comes Wyoming, which will make it eight out of nine. But then comes New York, which happens to allocate more delegates than Wyoming, Wisconsin, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, Utah, and Idaho combined.
New York is 17.6 percent African-American (versus 6.6 percent for Wisconsin) and 18.6 percent Hispanic (versus 6.5 percent for Wisconsin). Relative to that much more diverse electorate, it's not good enough for Sanders to narrowly edge out Clinton. According to Silver's math, he needs to beat her by 4 points to net enough delegates to stay on track — and that's even before he fell a delegate or two short in Wisconsin. Right now he's down 10 points.
To Sanders fans, this naysaying is just more evidence of the anti-Bernie bias in the media.
The truth is exactly the opposite. The media has a systematic self-interested bias toward exaggerating how close the race is. Sanders supporters are a minority of Democrats, but they are still a large number of people, and they avidly read and share content about Sanders's big fundraising hauls and his wins in low-population states.
Television networks want people to tune in to their debates and town halls, which they are much more likely to do if they think something is at stake. And Sanders's big fundraising has been transformed into big advertising dollars, which is literally money in the pockets of media companies.
The media loves Bernie Sanders!
Hillary had her great run.. just like predicted early on, and (with some exceptions like Alaska and Hawaii) did best in the more diverse states. Sanders has now had his run, and with Wyoming will have another.
From my own predictions, Sanders did better in Oklahoma than I thought he would, but not as well in Arizona than I thought he would. I also thought his margin of victory in Washington state was going to be even bigger than it was.
This will go all the way to the convention, and he will end up losing though. The numbers aren't there.
My only hope is that Clinton's win is in Pledged delegates. Even if come the convention she has the most voters, and the most pledged delegates, but not enough to clinch the nomination it will aggravate the already large rift between her supporters and Sanders supporters. Nobody wins from that.
At the end of the day Hillary WILL need at least a decent portion of the support Sanders got to win the GE. Likewise, if Bernie does actually manage to pull it out he WILL need a large portion of the support Hillary has had to win the GE.
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