Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said that the decision, first reported by the New York Times, would have been made regardless of Tuesday’s election results. He did not specify how many people are being let go but said that between 325 and 350 people will remain on the payroll.

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Briggs said Sanders's staff peaked at more than 1,000 in late January prior to the Iowa caucuses.

‘It’s something we’ve been talking about for quite a while now,” Briggs said of the new layoffs. “With 10 states now left to go, we need fewer people in place than we had been doing when there were 50 states to go. So the campaign has been doing some right-sizing.”

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He said the move was not a reflection of a slowdown in fundraising — one area of the campaign where Sanders has been outpacing Clinton in recent months.

Still, the move underscored Sanders’s long-shot status. A campaign more confident of its prospects of winning the nomination would probably be more inclined to leave people in place to focus on general-election preparations.

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On Tuesday, Sanders lost to Clinton in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware. Sanders won in Rhode Island. The senator spent Wednesday campaigning in Indiana, which has a primary this coming Tuesday.

In an interview Wednesday with The Washington Post, Sanders said he thinks the odds are against him but that he still has a “narrow” path to the nomination. Much of his focus in the coming weeks will be in California, the state with the single largest trove of Democratic delegates.

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On Wednesday evening, Briggs issued a statement on the layoffs, saying: