Steep climb still...

Bernie's math: Improbable, not impossible

Even after five recent blowout victories over Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders has a steep climb ahead.

By Steven Shepard

Bernie Sanders’ winning streak – which includes blowout victories over Hillary Clinton in three states on Saturday – has helped him narrow the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But if Sanders is going to surpass Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates to this summer’s convention in Philadelphia, he’ll need to build on that momentum and win by wide margins in the types of states where Clinton has prevailed thus far – and Sanders currently trails in most of them.

A POLITICO analysis underscores Sanders’ challenge: Even after runaway victories in Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington this week – he still trails Clinton by between 200 and 250 pledged delegates, pending final tallies from this week’s races. And while Wisconsin’s April 5 primary and Wyoming’s April 9 caucuses seem well-suited for the Vermont senator, the Democrats’ proportional delegate-allocation rules limit the extent to which he can eat into Clinton’s advantage.

Looking forward past the next two weeks, he currently trails Clinton in public polling in the four largest states left on the calendar: California, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. With the exception of his win in Michigan earlier this month, Sanders hasn’t yet demonstrated he can win large states like these – let alone by the wide margins he’ll need to close the pledged-delegate gap.

Another problem for Sanders: He has excelled in caucus states – winning 10 of 12 (including the last 10 consecutively). But most of the states left to come are holding primaries, including a number of contests only open to registered Democrats.

And Clinton has another insurance policy: the more than 700 so-called “superdelegates” who can support the candidate of their choosing on the convention floor, regardless of the primary or caucus results in their home states. Of the roughly 500 who have publicly expressed a preference at this stage of the campaign, about 95 percent are in Clinton’s corner.

Sanders’ chances of winning the nomination outright are slight: He would have to win slightly fewer than 60 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to surpass Clinton – a huge improvement over the roughly 45 percent of pledged delegates he’s captured so far.

In a best case scenario for Sanders, the results from this week represent the start of an unprecedented run that will give him momentum in the other states on the calendar and also help him peel off undecided superdelegates or even some already backing Clinton.

“A lot of superdelegates have pledged for Secretary Clinton,” Sanders said Sunday morning on CNN. “But I think when they begin to look at the reality – and that is that we, in poll after poll, are beating Donald Trump by much larger margins than is Secretary Clinton … a lot of these superdelegates may rethink their position with Secretary Clinton.”

The danger for Sanders is that – while he will continue to chip away at Clinton’s delegate lead over the next two weeks – the front-runner could reassert her dominance in late April states like New York, Maryland and California. And even if she finishes short of the overall threshold just with pledged delegates, Clinton would still have the plurality and only need a small number of superdelegates to put her over the top.

If Sanders is going to scramble the delegate math, it begins with Wisconsin next week. Here’s Sanders’ tight-rope path:

April

The third month of the nominating process begins with the Wisconsin primary on April 5, when 86 pledged delegates are at stake. Reliable public polling is scarce: A Marquette Law School poll last month showed the candidates neck-and-neck. The next one is due out Wednesday.

Even a narrow win for Sanders there would allow him to maintain his momentum through the rest of the month’s contests. But mathematically, a narrow Sanders victory there would only have a limited impact on the delegate deficit.

After two weeks off, the race moves to the second-largest state left on the calendar, New York, with 247 pledged delegates. Both candidates claim ties to the state: Sanders was born in Brooklyn, and Clinton moved to Westchester County in the waning months of her husband’s presidency and was twice elected to the Senate. Her campaign has its headquarters in Brooklyn.

Sanders’ team is confident they have the grassroots energy to close strong in New York. But Clinton held a 21-point lead in the latest poll from Siena College, and only registered Democrats can cast ballots in the primary – potentially negating Sanders’ advantages with independents.

April closes with a quintet of Northeast and Mid-Atlantic primaries on April 26: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Pennsylvania (189 pledged delegates) and Maryland (95 pledged delegates) are the night’s biggest prizes – and both appear unkind to Sanders at the moment. Clinton sported a 25-point lead in Pennsylvania in a Franklin & Marshall College poll out this week, and was in a similarly commanding position in a Gonzales Research & Marketing poll in Maryland earlier this month.

May

Indiana kicks off the month on May 3. The state went narrowly for Clinton during her protracted 2008 battle with Barack Obama. While there’s no public polling to gauge the candidates’ chances at Indiana’s 83 pledged delegates, there are a few curious cross-currents at play: Going back to the 2008 exit polls, more than four-in-five voters were white, which portends well for Sanders. But there were fewer younger voters in Indiana eight years ago than in other states, which could be a good sign for Clinton.

The following week could be a good one for Sanders, though few delegates are at stake: Democrats in West Virginia (29 pledged delegates) cast their ballots on May 10. A recent poll, which was conducting using landline phones, cell phones and online responses, gave Sanders a nearly two-to-one advantage over Clinton. (Nebraskans also go to the polls on May 10, but the Democratic primary is a beauty contest: Delegates were awarded in caucuses, which Sanders won, earlier this month.)

Sanders could also run strong on May 17, when voters in Kentucky and Oregon get their say. Both are closed primary states, but nearly nine-in-10 voters in both states were white in the 2008 primaries, according to exit polls.

June

A strong Sanders run through May would set up a massive clash on June 7, with primaries in five states: California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota.

California is the most significant, with 475 pledged delegates at stake. Sanders has some catching up to do there: A Public Policy Institute of California poll released last week showed Clinton with a 7-point lead, 48 percent to 41 percent.

In one of the more diverse states in the nation, Sanders holds a 5-point advantage over white voters in the poll, while Clinton leads by 23 points among Latinos, who represented about 3-in-10 voters in the 2008 primary.

New Jersey (126 pledged delegates) also looms large, but a Rutgers-Eagleton poll last month gave Clinton a 23-point lead there.

Other contests

The delegate chase isn’t confined to the states above. A number of states hold split caucuses and conventions to award delegates through June.

Wyoming, for example, holds its county caucuses on April 9 – but awards roughly the same number of delegates at the state convention over Memorial Day weekend. In North Dakota, the process is split between legislative-district caucuses on June 7, and a statewide gathering 11 days later.

And the District of Columbia and a number of territories, including Guam and Puerto Rico, have also yet to weigh in.