2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: What would happen in a 3-way race? [View all]tritsofme
(17,376 posts)vote between Clinton and Sanders would enable Trump to carry several traditionally blue states, possibly with less than 40% of the vote, allowing him to win the electoral college while likely losing the popular vote by a considerable margin.
Another possibility would be Trump winning the Romney 2012 states, but then Clinton and Bernie splitting the rest of Obama's 2012 states, with Sanders winning enough EVs to deny Clinton an electoral college majority, throwing the election to the new House, which will more than likely still favor Republicans.
Best case scenario would be Clinton still prevailing in enough states to win a clear electoral college majority, while perhaps only shedding a small outlier like Vermont to Sanders.
This is a bad plan, a very bad plan.