If you talk to people on the left, they’re excited about Bernie Sanders and many of them don’t like Hillary. Sanders supporters will even point to his recent wins and new momentum as proof that he can win the Democratic nomination. A new report throws the cold water of reality on that wishful thinking.
This is from the polling and analysis site Five Thirty Eight:
Bernie Sanders Is Even Less Competitive Than He Appears
Bernie Sanders’s supporters are fond of the hypothesis that Democratic superdelegates, the elected leaders and party officials who currently support Hillary Clinton by a lopsided-doesn’t-even-begin-to-describe-it 469 to 31, are going to bow to the “will of the people” if Sanders ends up winning more pledged delegates than Clinton by June.
There’s just one hiccup in this logic: Sanders fans seem to be conflating the pledged delegate count and the “will of the voters,” when in fact the two are far from interchangeable.
Sanders’s reliance on extremely low-turnout caucus states has meant the pledged delegate count overstates his share of votes. To date, Sanders has captured 46 percent of Democrats’ pledged delegates but just 42 percent of raw votes. So even if Sanders were to draw even in pledged delegates by June — which is extremely unlikely — Clinton could be able to persuade superdelegates to stick with her by pointing to her popular vote lead…
In other words, Sanders may have had a great night in Wisconsin on Tuesday and will probably have an even more terrific day in Wyoming on Saturday. But in the long run, even if he were somehow to win more pledged delegates, he’d probably still wind up short in the popular vote.
In other words, all those lefties who are feeling the Bern will be forced to vote for Grandma Wall Street this fall if they want to vote for a Democrat.
That’s great news for Republicans, no matter who gets the GOP nomination.
