Bernie Sanders’ Path to Victory All Hinges on This One Chart


For those of you wondering how well Bernie Sanders did last night, here’s a table that you might want to keep handy. It’s from Nate Silver, and it shows how big a margin Bernie needs in the remaining states to catch up with Hillary and get a majority of pledged delegates. In Wisconsin, for example, he needed to win by 16 points, but he won by only 13 14 points and picked up 47 48 delegates instead of the 50 he needed:

Roughly speaking, Bernie broke even yesterday. He’ll need to do this well or better in every future election. In any case, this is a good table to keep at hand for upcoming primaries. It gives you an idea of how big a victory Bernie needs in order to catch up with Hillary. Anything less is basically a setback; anything more is a victory.

NOTE: I excerpted the table to include only the states with more than 50 delegates. The full table is at the link.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate