A Sanders Comeback

A Sanders Comeback Would Be Unprecedented
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APR 28, 2016 AT 6:39 PM

A Sanders Comeback Would Be Unprecedented
By Milo Beckman

Filed under 2016 Election

Bernie Sanders during a rally in Springfield, Oregon, on Thursday. RYAN KANG / AP
Dear democratic socialists, political revolutionaries, Bern-feelers at large: We need to have a talk.

Let me begin by saying that I bear no ill will towards Mr. Sanders. Nothing that follows should be misconstrued as an attack on his policies, his track record, his electability in November or his character. I’m not a corporate media crony, or a plant from a pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC. I’m just a guy who believes in the predictive power of cold, hard data.

And the unsexy truth is that, barring some catastrophic news event, Sanders will not win the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. In fact, most past candidates in Sanders’s position dropped out long before this point in the race, and those who stayed in made little pretense of winning. (The Sanders campaign, which announced Wednesday it was laying off a ton of staff, may be recognizing this.)

Historically speaking, Democratic primary races do not have many twists and turns. Rather, the eventual winner tends to take an early lead — on or before Super Tuesday — and stay there. Runner-ups can kick for a while, but they tend to concede the race by February or early March.

As it stands, Sanders is firmly in runner-up territory. He is losing 9 million to 12 million among those who have already voted, and polls show him lagging by an average of 8.8 percentage points in the states yet to vote1. Sanders has gained substantially in national polls but is still the less popular candidate (outside of the Bernietopia that is social media2).

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-sanders-comeback-would-be-unprecedented/