Bernie Sanders had a great week. He won big in five Western caucuses: Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Utah and Hawaii. It was enough to whittle
Hillary Clinton’s pledged-delegate lead to around 230, despite her own solid win in Arizona.
To get to a majority, not counting superdelegates, Mr. Sanders now needs more than 56 percent of the remaining pledged delegates.
.....the remaining states aren’t especially welcoming ....[and] force[him] to confront his big weaknesses: affluence, diversity, establishment-friendly areas and closed primary contests.
..........Our model estimates that Mrs. Clinton would win around 54 percent of the remaining delegates, ......... She loses in a bunch of predominantly white, working-class states where Mr. Sanders is hoping to fare well: Wisconsin, Wyoming, North Dakota, Kentucky, Oregon, Indiana and West Virginia.
But she holds on in the affluent and diverse states along the coasts. Mr. Sanders will need to win these states – and probably by a comfortable margin – to overtake her delegate lead.
........ this type of a model is not a prediction. It merely supposes that the rest of the campaign follows the same demographic patterns of the first half. And sometimes voters go another way. The model put Mrs. Clinton on track for a big win in Michigan, which she ultimately lost. After Michigan, the same approach predicted a close race in demographically similar Ohio, where she got a big win.
Just this last week, Mr. Sanders beat the expectations of this model in all five caucus states (but underperformed by more in Arizona). There’s no reason he can’t do it again. But this approach does give a broad sense of what’s left, and it doesn’t suggest a great opportunity for Mr. Sanders.
