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Despite losing by double digits on Tuesday night, Clinton has 94 percent of the delegates needed to clinch the nomination. She needs 144 more delegates to meet that 2,383-delegate threshold, according to The Associated Press. That's just 16 percent of the remaining pledged delegates.





Sanders, whom the AP projected would have a net gain of five delegates from West Virginia as of 11:13 p.m., can't reach 2,383 delegates without winning over more superdelegates, the party leaders who can vote for any candidate.

"We fully acknowledge — we are good at arithmetic — that we have an uphill climb ahead of us," Sanders said in his victory speech Tuesday night, which he gave at a rally in Salem, Ore.

"But we are used to fighting uphill climbs," he added, as the crowd screamed and cheered.

"We have been fighting uphill from the first day of this campaign when people considered us a fringe candidacy."

The West Virginia result highlights the main obstacle blocking Sanders’s path to the Democratic nomination.

Victories, even dominant ones, are not enough. Sanders needs 914 delegates to clinch the nomination, but there are only 897 delegates awarded in the remaining state contests. He would need every one of them, plus the support of superdelegates, to surpass Clinton.

But Democratic primaries award their delegates proportionally, which means it’s nearly impossible for a candidate trailing like Sanders to meet that goal.

Clinton has 523 superdelegates to Sanders’s 39, according to the AP. But counting only pledged delegates, they are much closer overall: 1,716 for Clinton and 1,430 for Sanders.

The Sanders campaign has a theory that if Sanders can beat Clinton in pledged delegates, he can convince superdelegates to switch their support to him. The Sanders camp would tell them to follow the will of the people rather than the party establishment.

But that argument looks shaky, too, because Clinton is likely to be millions of votes ahead of Sanders.

Perhaps acknowledging that grim reality, the Sanders campaign has changed its argument subtly in recent weeks. Team Sanders now spends more time saying it will flip superdelegates by using general election polls to show that show Sanders to be a stronger general election candidate against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump Donald John TrumpObama calls on Senate not to fill Ginsburg's vacancy until after election Planned Parenthood: 'The fate of our rights' depends on Ginsburg replacement Progressive group to spend M in ad campaign on Supreme Court vacancy MORE.

Sanders hammered that message in his victory speech Tuesday night.

"Our message to the Democratic delegates who will be assembling in Philadelphia is while we may have many disagreements with Secretary Clinton, there is one area we agree," Sanders told the Oregon rally. "We must defeat Donald Trump."

In Trump-like fashion, Sanders proceeded to run through national and state-by-state polls that show him winning by bigger margins than Clinton.

Sanders now heads into the final stretch of the primary season.

Democrats have 11 contests over the next month. The next primaries, in Oregon and Kentucky, are held on May 17, offering a combined 116 pledged delegates.

The Democratic race culminates on June 14, when the District of Columbia votes in its primary.

But the Sanders team is putting all its stock on one date: June 7, when six states vote, including California, where 475 pledged delegates will be awarded.

For Team Sanders, it’s all about California, and the campaign would need to beat Clinton in a landslide.

The odds are still overwhelmingly on Clinton.