Sanders' Wins To Date and His Path Forward

[Attorney in Texas]

So far, Hillary remains successful as a regional candidate, but a weak and vulnerable national candidate.

The contests over the past month have confirmed the extreme weakness of Hillary's centrist campaign outside least progressive region of the US (the 13 ex-Confederate states of the Bible Belt):



First, let's be perfectly clear before the Hillary Patrol begins their whine about how "the Bible Belt matters!" Of course all regions matter. The Bible Belt is about a fifth of the country and it should count for a similar proportion of the candidate selection process. We get that Hillary has a southern accent and likes to talk about her church going faith in God when she campaigns in the Bible Belt. We get that she's the former First Lady of Arkansas. We get that her centrist message is going to beat a strong progressive message in the most anti-choice, anti-LGBT-equality, anti-union, anti-semitic region of the US, our Bible Belt. No one is ignoring this vote. Hillary won it. Congratulations!

In the rest of America, however, Sanders' 16 wins in the 23 non-Bible-Belt states where Sanders has earned 56% of the pledged delegates continues to show that Sanders is much preferred over Hillary:

State.....Hillary Delegates.....Sanders Delegates

IA.....................23....................21
NH.....................9....................15
NV....................20....................15
CO....................28....................38
MA....................46....................45
MN....................31....................46
OK....................17.....................21
VT......................0.....................16
NE....................10.....................15
KS....................10.....................23
ME......................9.....................16
MI.....................63.....................67
IL......................78.....................78
MO....................36.....................35
OH....................81.....................62
AZ…………………..….42………….....………33
UT……………………....6…………….....…….27
ID……………………..…5…………….....…….18
AK.....................3......................13
HI......................8......................17
WA....................27.....................74
WI.....................38....................48
WY....................7.......................7

Total................597...................750 out of 1347

While Sanders has already erased almost half of the pledged delegate lead Hillary built up in the Bible Belt, he still has a 216 delegate deficit to overcome, but this is to be expected considering the least progressive states were front-loaded onto the calendar. If you account for the ideological front-loading of the least progressive states, then you would expect that Sanders would be behind in the delegate count at this stage in the primary calendar even though he would be on tract for the nomination.

Considering this front-loading, Sanders is only about 90 pledged delegates short of where he would want to be to remain on track to win the majority of the pledged delegates.

This 90 pledged delegate gap is definitely surmountable.

Nate Silver's projections about the pace at which each of the candidates would need to win pledged delegates to enter the convention with a majority assumes a race that was tied from beginning to end.

But the race has not been static; instead, Hillary started out ahead and Sanders has caught or passed her (compare a graph of all national polling versus a graph of only the more reliable live cellphone plus landline polling):

ALL POLLS


ALL LIVE PHONE POLLS

Sanders' taking the lead is even more significant because these nationwide polls include the 13 Bible Belt states where Hillary is far more popular so, to balance our Hillary's regional popularity, Sanders needs to be even more popular outside the Bible Belt than the popularity shown in the national polling.

We can do this!

Keep fighting! Keep phone banking! Keep winning!