Mark Twain famously said there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

Bernie Sanders supporters are going with statistics. Specifically, voter-registration data in California, the most populous and arguably most Democratic state in the country.

Since the beginning of the year, 1.5 million new Democrats have joined California's voting lists. That's a 218 percent increase over 2012, and it's likely -- since it's Sanders' campaign that has provoked a passionate response among the young -- that a large majority of these newbies signed up so they could vote for the Vermont senator on June 7.

Older, traditional Democrats, meanwhile, appear to be unmotivated. "Only half of California's adults are likely to vote in the 2016 presidential election, and these voters do not reflect the state's diversity, attitudes or policy preferences," the Public Policy Institute of California has determined.

That could mean a thumping victory for Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, in the Golden State on Tuesday. He also has a pretty good shot at winning many of the other states voting next week, such as Montana, New Mexico and North Dakota.

Even if California and many of the other remaining states go for Sanders, say backers of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, so what? With the primary season wrapping up June 14 in Washington, DC, the former secretary of state will still hold a lead in pledged delegates, thanks to their proportional distribution.

Ah, proclaim the dreamers, but California could change everything.

"The inevitability behind Mrs. Clinton's nomination will be in large measure eviscerated if she loses the June 7 California primary to Bernie Sanders," Fox News commentator and former Bill Clinton pollster Douglas E. Schoen wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal. "That could well happen."

The British newspaper The Independent backs Schoen's analysis. "If Mr. Sanders were to win in California, it would seriously call into question Ms. Clinton's candidacy in the general election and could result in a number of superdelegates -- distinguished party leaders and elected officials who are free to support any candidate for the presidential nomination -- withdrawing their support," the paper opined.

A significant flip of superdelegate support is probably not going to happen no matter what happens in these final primary states, but it's exactly what Sanders' supporters want to hear.

"I think we still have a chance, and I wouldn't sleep well if we didn't keep trying," 24-year-old Navona Gallegos, a Santa Fe, N.M., hypnotherapist, told the Kansas City Star this week.

She is, no doubt, speaking for millions of Sanders' fans across the country.

Sanders, for his part, continues to stoke the fire. He kept his name front and center in the media cycle by challenging presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump to a debate -- and almost getting Trump to bite. He and his team also continue to push "evidence" that he would be the stronger nominee than Clinton, pointing to polls that suggest he would do better against Trump. He insists this should pull superdelegates into his camp.

Superdelegates may be for Clinton right now, he says, but "they don't vote until they're on the floor of the Democratic convention."

None of this, ultimately, is likely to matter. Clinton has 1,770 pledged delegates to Sanders' 1,500, with very few states left to vote. Sanders would need to win nearly 70 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to end up with a majority of them. That means the superdelegates are really Sanders' only hope. If Clinton holds on to most of her superdelegates (she has more than 500, Sanders fewer than 50), she's has a lock on the nomination.

This math and a fresh cup of coffee should make plain to everyone that Hillary Clinton is going to be the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee. But as long as there are votes still to be cast, the dream -- and the power of statistics -- lives on for Sanders and his followers.

-- Douglas Perry