Bernie Sanders is set to pull off a win tonight in Wisconsin over Hillary Clinton, where politics is very white and very progressive. But as we always say about a Sanders win, it’s all about how big of a win he can post and we are talking big double digit wins.
Nearly every poll takes in the state shows that it will be too close for Sanders get any double digit win, he leads in Clinton in the polls by anywhere from 2 to 8 points in the state. He will probably need to beat Hillary Clinton by much more than that to have a real shot at genuinely challenging her strong delegate lead in the Democratic contest.
Sanders to Wisconsin because if Clinton were to upset him or for that matter lose close it would not help him catch Clinton as they head into the big New York primary on April 19th. Then comes Pennsylvania, New Jersey and California, tough for him to win and catching the former Secretary of State.
Clinton is up by more than 220 pledged delegates. Sanders’s supporters have taken to pointing out that since only about half of the pledged delegates have been decided, there’s still enough states remaining for Sanders to still close the gap. (Clinton also leads among superdelegates.)
To get a sense of just how difficult it would be for Sanders to close the delegate gap, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver came up with a “Bernie miracle” model that lays out a path for him to win the 988 delegates he needs.
Silver found that Sanders would need to win Wisconsin by 16 points to run even with Clinton nationally. He’d also need to win Clinton’s home state of New York by at least 4 points, though most polls have found Sanders trailing there.
Let me once again say that we are talking about numbers and as we started this article – the numbers don’t favor Sanders win. But Sanders has the money and the drive to take this battle all the way to California, to make sure that the Democratic Party makes sure they hear his populist platform and add to it for the race in the fall.
