I'm not really sure about this. It seems to me that Sanders might've peaked with New Hampshire and since then has been sliding. If he really was picking up momentum he would be doing better in the Southern States. While he won OK he did get blown out in Texas and in the other Southern States. Clinton dominance in the Southern states is what was pretty much predicted weeks ago and if Sanders was picking up steam we should've seen more difference. Instead Super Tuesday played out pretty much as predicted. Further even though it was a narrow loss losing Mass. is a bad sign since that is very near to his state. From the breakdown of the votes it also looks like he lost in the areas of the states where he should've been the strongest. In the Boston metro area where young college age voters are heavily concentrated. Sanders still has a chance of winning but the math is getting much harder. I expect him to still win a few more states but I'm guessing most of the change will now come from Democrats solidifying behind Clinton out of fear of Trump.
To put this in basketball terms think about this as a game at halftime with Team Hillary with a 10 pt lead. Team Bernie can score a lot of baskets in the second half but won't win if all the end up doing is trading baskets with team Hillary. Because the Democrats don't do winner take all primaries Clinton can still afford to lose some states and still come out ahead. In 2008 Clinton was on the opposite end of this where she ended up winning some big states late in the game but with proportional delegates never could wipe out Obama's early delegate edge.
I vote with my wallet trusting Bernie will spend it where it counts...and that ain't Texas. I've donated more to Bernie than I have to all other political candidates in my life combined. No point in bothering to show up to vote for him yesterday or any Dem in the upcoming general election. I don't do personal moral victories.
Sanders polls numbers have kept a steady upward trajectory throughout his campaign. The goal was never to win Super Tuesday, but to survive it. Winning 3 of 4 tossups did just that. He has time and friendly states now.
Sanders when he wins, it is in small states and usually by smaller margins. This makes it very hard for him to turn the delegate count in his favor. He also is only winning in white states, minorities are not buying what he is selling. it would take something amazing for Clinton to lose. At this point he has to hope for an indictment and the FBI hasn't even interviewed Clinton yet.
This is a key point. Sanders won Minnesota comfortably but Clinton still picked up 2/3 the number of delegates that Sanders did. Meanwhile in Texas Clinton crushed Sanders and picked up twice the amount of delegates. As I said Sanders can probably still win some states but not even counting Super Delegates Clinton has built a lead and all she needs to do is keep from getting blown out in states that Sanders win and she wraps it up. Also in the latest RCP aggregate Clinton has pulled back to a 9% lead on Sanders nationally after it dropped to under 5%.
Look at the 8 states out of the South that have voted. Wins: Oklahoma, Colorado, New Hampshire, Vermont (where he got all 16), Minnesota Losses: Nevada (Nevada & Utah have been pro republican anyways), Iowa (.2% loss) and Massachusetts (a 1.6% loss) All these regions typically vote the same way. He won't win every one of these states but he's not going to lose badly in any of them. He had an almost even split of delegates in those two losses. Hillary ran a great campaign in the South but she was looking at stealing all the delegates in Texas and Tennessee (Sanders not getting 15%) but him getting above 30% just shows how much his campaign is accomplishing. You just don't stay elected in politics for 50 years without learning how to build a campaign, he's killing her in donations, endorsements, debates, etc. The more people who see who Bernie Sanders is really they like not just the awful socialist who's going to take all your money away like the mass-media garbage they spew) 229 delegates will not be hard to make up. Clinton probably expected 500 or so more delegates after Super Tuesday. Now we are entering pro-Sanders regions. West, Midwest and North East. Super Delegates will side with wherever the delegates go. This will be a super close campaign run until June. And Sanders is about to gain some ground with early polling numbers in Nebraska, Kansas and one more and Michigan up for grabs. The debate in Flint is huge. I legimately think he could win 27-28 of the remaing 35 states. With the way things are going.
Colorado and Minnesota are not small states, they are some of the bigger delegate states in the primaries. Oklahoma was thought to be a Clinton win. He won every delegate in Vermont and came within a few points of doing the same in New Hampshire (steal getting above 75% of the delegates) These regions produce very similar results. It was not expected by the Sanders campaign too win as many delegates as he did in Texas or Tennessee. She Arkansas and 6 states that will vote Drumpf or the Zodiac Killer in November. I know your trolling and spewing the same garbage the mass Media wants to make it as hopeless as possible. But it's 2016 and it ain't selling. It's growing stronger.
Don't care for mass media, but poll analyzers and delegate geeks are basically calling for Clinton. While anything is possible (it's a year when Donald Trump is leading the Republican field after all), I wouldn't get my hopes up.
Will see over the next few months. Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma probably weren't wins a few months ago. Regardless if Clinton wins she's going to have to adopt Sanders platform too get back voters that are becoming increasingly frustrated with her.
I've seen a meme going around on Facebook with a pic of Obama saying to Sanders supporters "Hillary Swept Super Tuesday in 2008 and I still won". Clinton didn't sweep Super Tuesday 2008 actually Obama won 13 states over the Super Tuesdays to Clinton's 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Tuesday,_2008
It works both ways. Sanders lost Mass. But he picked up an almost identical amount of delegates because he got 49% of the vote. In VT. Hillary didn't meet the threshold and picked up zero delegates. There's still 35 states left, and some big ones are favorable to Bernie. It is still an uphill battle for him, and if he manages to win it will definitely be against the odds.
I know Minnesota didn't do any recent polling but it is true the last poll done back in January showed Clinton with a 20 pt lead. Most poll observers felt that going into the Caucus Minnesota was a tossup so Sanders performed much better than expected. That said the problem still is that Clinton still picked up delegates and combined with how many she won from Texas and other southern states has built up a good cushion. The problem that Sanders faces isn't that he needs to win states but that he needs to win states big. Sweeping the 16 delegates of VT doesn't hurt but when you consider Clinton picked up 29 delegates in MN in a defeat shows that the math problem that Sanders faces. Theoretically Sanders could win all of the remaining states and as long as Clinton keeps it very close she would still win the election. That's not even counting super delegates.
Not sure about Oklahoma, but Colorado and Minnesota were states that favored Sanders if he were to win anywhere. Basically, any caucus state favors him because of the enthusiasm gap, and because Hillary isn't really organizing in those states. This was actually how Obama won in 2008 - he crushed Hillary in all the caucus states while keeping it close in more traditional states. People forget that Obama lost most of the big states in 2008. The problem for Sanders is that he's getting obliterated everywhere in the South and every large state that runs a normal primary. Enthusiasm only can carry you so far and only works when you have a tiny number of votes. I'm at the point where I kind of would like to see Bernie as the nominee, as the most stark contrast to Trump. But I see no mathematical path forward for him. He wins a specific and growing win of the party, but he just doesn't have the broad appeal and there's no way to rack up the delegates he needs. He needed a GOP type race with 3 or 4 candidates and then he could be squeaking by winning a bunch of states with 30-35% of the vote.
We're a little under 1/3rd of the way through the process. Clinton is 30% of the way to a pledged delegate majority. Sanders is 20% of the way to a pledged delegate majority. 40 more contests have yet to happen (not counting voters abroad). Of those 40, you can count the number of Clinton-Locks on one hand. A miracle is not necessary for this to happen.
Except it is when you look at delegates instead of # of states. With proportional delegation all the way through, making up that small amount is difficult. Think of it this way - Clinton has won a whole bunch of states by gigantic margins to get this lead. To balance that out, Sanders would have to do something similar in reverse. What decent-sized/big states like Georgia or Texas can Bernie Sanders win 70-30 to make up that ground? He's winning big in caucuses, but there are very few big states with them. He needs to be dominating in places like MA, which should be amongst his best states, and he's nowhere close to that. He hasn't won a regular primary state by any notable margin where he'd make up any delegates. The GOP and the Dem Primaries are very different due to delegate distribution. This is why so many of were saying after Super Tuesday in 2008 that Hillary was mathematically finished due to her being in a similar position as Sanders is today. If you draw out the numbers, finding an actual path forward to winning the delegate count is difficult, at best (even ignoring Superdelegates, who are fickle and likely ultimately support the popular winner.)
(Sorry - New Hampshire was the one exception - a primary state won comfortably - but he also had the luxury of spending a year campaigning there).
I won't take a miracle for Sanders to win the nomination but it is very very difficult. The problem is with proportional delegate awards magnifies the importance of an early delegate lead. If the Democrats did it the way the Republics do with winner take all states Sanders would have a better shot with winning later states. That was the same situation that Clinton faced against Obama in 2008. She won states late in the process but Obama kept on picking up delegates even in defeat. DAMN YOU MAJOR! You beat me to it again...
