Hillary is coming off the back of an extremely good couple of months, boosted by a good debate performance, the Benghazi debacle and Biden deciding not to run. The main question now is whether she can actually maintain or build on the lead she's developed, or whether it will begin to drop off.
If Bernie can continue to build name recognition and if his outreach programs with AA and Latino voters start to bear fruit, then the whole equation changes. He doesn't need to swap numbers with Hillary in the minority communities in order for the race to change, he just needs to win over a more substantial part of those demographics and then his natural strengths with other parts of the voting public start to take effect.
Money during the primary is not an issue. He's raising close to Hillary already. So basically if Hillary's new support doesn't hold up and he can continue to build then everything is wide open. From where they are right now she has a lot more to lose than he does. The downside of having the majority of the media spotlight and being the prime target for the red half of the country is that the potential for an 'oops' moment grows far, far larger.
It's basically impossible to predict which way any of it will go at the moment though, because there's just too many variables in play. It's certainly early enough though for Bernie to be able to win if events go the right way for him.
Ok so let's say he wins the nomination and has to face the GOP. That 'marginal' support from the Democratic party? Well it wasn't marginal, because he just won the primary which by definition means he already won over a majority. He's now also not running against a Dem he's up again a hard right Republican and as we keep being told, the next President could end up picking up to four Supreme Court judges. So the Democratic party isn't going to come together against any of the GOP field? The wing most likely to sit out a potential election would be the hard left if Clinton wins, because they see her as betraying Democratic values. If Sanders wins, why do the moderate Dems sit out? Because he didn't have a Dem badge on early enough?
Then you have the non-Democratic voters such as the Southern working class whites. That is where Sanders has the biggest potential to eat a huge chunk of the GOP vote. He also has an interesting opportunity to take a chunk out of the religious right too, although that's very much open for debate. The larger issue though is that many on the right are sick of establishment politics which is why Carson and Trump are where they are. Sanders feeds off that and is convincing because he's happy to say the things politicians don't say.
Money in the general will be important, but he'll be relying heavily on grassroots work and social media/internet for traction. I actually do worry about it however, and wonder if it'll be the one huge compromise he's forced to make. It might come down to "We're going to use the Super PAC system this one time so we can destroy the Super PAC system". I hope it doesn't come to that though, it'd probably cost him support from the left.
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