Numbers Time: White Knucklin'

You guys, how about Kentucky! That was utter insanity. I'm at work, working on a piece where every time I make a change, it takes 30 seconds to a minute to render before I can review the change. That meant starting at about 4:45 until I left work, I could, every few minutes, refresh the CNN election tracker. And oh my God!

At 4:50, Sanders was ahead by 800 votes with 50% reporting. 800 votes! By 5:00, it was 330 votes, with 61% reporting. 5:02, 120 votes! THEN at fucking 5:03, Clinton was ahead by only 90! At about 5:30, Clinton was ahead by about 2,000, then 4,000. At 5:56, Sanders was ahead by only 200 votes! Then 200 became 2,000 with about 81% reporting, and just a few minutes later CLINTON was up by 2,500, with 95% reporting.

Even right now, with the election called for Clinton, they are only separated by less than 2,000 votes! That's crazy. That's more people than caucused in Guam!



Unfortunately for Sanders, that means he falls well short of his margin of victory, even if the race ends up being called for him. Kentucky has 55 delegates, and right now, both candidates hold 27, leaving 1. Once the count is final, that vote will go to whomever they call the winner. That means even if they overturn the result and call Kentcuky for Bernie, he will still be well short of the 41 delegates he needed to stay on track.

Over in Oregon, it's 10:30, and I don't want to wait for results to do some math. Right now, the count is 31 Bernie, 24 Hillary. That's +7 with 6 delegates remaining, so his maximum right now is +13. So let's say he gets +13.  Even his best outcome in this race is well below the +27 I said he would get if he could match the 72.7% he got in neighboring Washington. And that's +13 in arguably the most liberal state in the country and after a massively successful drive to register independent voters as democrats. That means Bernie's best result in a primary election is still +16 in Vermont. In a state with nearly four times as many delegates up for grabs, Bernie still can't deliver big wins in a non-caucus state.

So even with a win and a very narrow loss, which would seem to be a pretty big night for Bernie, he is still behind by at least 264 delegates. Let's say he wins the remaining 9 races with 60% of the vote (remember, that's by a margin of 1 million votes in California). Even then, he can only pick up 160 delegates, falling at least 104 short of the goal. Compare that to last week when this same model had him 93 delegates short. Based on this model, he is in a worse position than before today.

STATE	TOTAL	NET	%
Virgin Islds.	7	+1	60%
North Dakota	18	+4	60%
South Dakota	20	+4	60%
D.C.	20	+4	60%
Montana	21	+5	60%
New Mexico	34	+7	60%
Puerto Rico	60	+12	60%
New Jersey	126	+25	60%
California	475	+99	60%
___TOTAL	NET:	+160

Put in other words, that's 264 delegates in 9 races, or +29.34 delegates per race. Again, that puts him over 100% in 6 of the races, meaning, his best shot in those races combined (see chart below) is +50. He needs +176 in these.

STATE	TOTAL	GOAL	NET	%
Virgin Islds.	7	5	+3	71.4%
North Dakota	18	14	+10	77.8%
South Dakota	20	16	+11	80%
D.C.	20	10	0	50%
Montana	21	17	+12	81%
New Mexico	34	28	+14	80.9%

So he can only pick up +50, that means his best case scenario after these six is to be behind by 214. Divided by the remaining 3 races, that's +71.34 per race! And that means he's out in Puerto Rico. Giving Bernie 80% in Puerto Rico gives him +36, bringing him down to 178. Divided by the remaining 2 races, that's +89 per race.

STATE	TOTAL	GOAL	%
Puerto Rico	60	48	80%
New Jersey	126	108	85.3%
California	475	282	59.4%

If 4.8 million Democrats vote, 59.4% is 902,400. So there it is, Bernie's path to victory. He needs to win every race (except DC, he's not going to win DC) with 80% and win California by 900,000 votes.

And Bernie has yet to win a primary by more than +16, not even in Oregon.

I still don't understand how anyone thinks he has a chance to win.