But that’s misleading. More than 160 delegates have been allocated to other candidates, most of whom have dropped out. There are 2,451 delegates still to be awarded, including 2,115 in states that haven’t voted. Biden needs 1,238 of those 2,451 delegates, while Sanders needs 1,379 of them. In other words, Biden needs to win 50.5 percent of them, while Sanders needs to win 56.3 percent of them.

Right away, the problem becomes obvious. The Democratic Party allocates delegates roughly proportionally, meaning winning a state with 55 percent of the vote yields about 55 percent of the delegates. In other words, Sanders needs to win about 56 percent of the vote in the remaining contests — meaning he needs to beat Biden by about 12 points across the board.

An uphill climb, sure, but insurmountable? Well, consider that national polling has Biden leading Sanders by nearly 20 points.

In some states, Sanders may be able to beat Biden, perhaps even by 12 points. But it seems unlikely that he can do so in each of the remaining contests given how much more popular Biden is overall among Democratic voters.

AD

AD

In fact, we expect Biden’s delegate lead to grow, not narrow, over the short term. Next week, for example, there are 577 delegates at stake in four contests: Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio. The biggest of those is Florida, where 219 delegates will be awarded. FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls in the state doesn’t show Sanders leading by 12 points. It shows him trailing by nearly 40. That margin could add about 90 delegates to Biden’s margin over Sanders — more delegates than are at stake overall in 21 of the 29 contests that will still need to be decided. Adding 90 delegates to his lead over Sanders will more than make up for the delegate advantage Sanders gained by winning California.

After Tuesday night, there are seven states with more than 100 delegates still on the calendar. Sanders lost all of them four years ago. In the states that have to vote, Hillary Clinton added to her advantage over Sanders by more than 200 delegates in 2016.

All of this suggests a very limited path forward for Sanders, barring a complete collapse in support for Biden which, at this late hour, seems unlikely. Biden’s sudden surge in the past two weeks, after all, was a function of his showing unexpected strength — and of ideologically similar candidates lining up behind him.

AD

AD

Sanders's path to the nomination wasn't much better by the middle of March four years ago, but he had a better argument for why he should press forward.

In 2016, Sanders argued that he had momentum behind him. Much of Sanders's argument for his becoming the nominee the last time around was predicated on his having momentum powering his candidacy. He barely registered in national polling until the middle of 2015, steadily pushing higher until he basically tied Clinton nationally in late April.

Coupled with a string of big wins in smaller states including Idaho, Maine and Washington, Sanders argued that Clinton’s support was evaporating, while he was continuing to surge higher. His surprise win in Michigan embodied the sense he had something going, which Clinton couldn’t match. He used that win later in the nominating process to argue he could win Rust Belt states that Clinton couldn’t — a claim that may have ended up having some merit.

AD

AD

Sanders's momentum argument fell apart in late April, when the calendar switched from those small states — which were mostly caucuses where Sanders did particularly well — into primaries in more populous states.

This year, Idaho, Maine and Washington switched from caucuses to primaries. Biden won Idaho and Maine, and is running even with Sanders in Washington as of writing. That move away from caucuses itself diminishes Sanders’s chances even while the caucuses in Iowa and Nevada may have given a false sense of his strength early in the primary calendar.

More importantly, Sanders entered the 2020 contest as one of the top-tier candidates in polling. Stories about his support have focused on his inability to add support, not on how he’s adding support incessantly. The momentum case doesn’t exist. And on Tuesday night, Biden won Michigan easily.

AD

AD

There are no superdelegates to persuade in the first nominating vote. That momentum case became central to Sanders's late-campaign effort to persuade superdelegates — delegates who came to the convention without being committed to a candidate — to support his nomination. After 2016, though, Sanders and his allies pushed to limit the power of superdelegates, eliminating their influence in the first nominating vote. In other words, making a rhetorical case to superdelegates won't make any difference if Biden wins a majority of pledged delegates before the convention.

To his credit, Sanders has acknowledged that this shift changes his approach to the nominating vote. If Biden has more pledged delegates coming into the convention, Sanders has said, he'd support Biden being the nominee.

Biden isn’t Hillary Clinton. Some part of Sanders’s strength in 2016 was a function not of support for Sanders but opposition to Clinton. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver figured perhaps a quarter of Sanders’s support was really an anti-Clinton vote in 2016. The math works: Sanders peaked at about 46 percent in 2016 and is at about 35 percent now — 25 percent lower than four years ago.

AD

AD

There is an anti-Biden vote this year, but it’s probably already baked into Sanders’s existing support. The bigger problem for the U.S. senator from Vermont may be that there was a chunk of anti-Sanders voters who lined up with Biden once their preferred candidates got out of the race.

Democrats are much more worried about the general election. Perhaps the most significant change since 2016 is that Democrats seem to be much less interested in an extended primary fight that could weaken the eventual nominee before November.

In early 2016, as the Republican Party was moving toward nominating Donald Trump, Democrats felt some confidence that they would have an easy victory in the general election. Polls continually showed both Clinton and Sanders would beat Trump, allowing the party the luxury of noodling over the candidates’ competing visions.

AD

AD

This year, there’s a greater sense of urgency. The consolidation around Biden was, in large part, a consolidation focused on electability, the sense he would be a much better bet in defeating Trump’s reelection effort. Such calculations are tricky and flawed, but it’s clear Biden’s success is mostly a function of Democrats’ eagerness to get on with beating Trump already.

Again, while Sanders’s path toward a delegate plurality was not any better in 2016, his rhetorical case was more robust. He could push forward with his challenge to Clinton until the convention, arguing that — or hoping that — superdelegates would be compelled to vote for him. That he and Clinton both polled well against Trump suggested the extended primary fight wouldn’t matter much. What’s more, that polling suggested that, because Clinton would probably win the presidency, it was useful to try to pull her to her left and to build a left-wing coalition that would keep that pressure on during her administration.

With the benefit of hindsight, Sanders probably recognizes the protracted fight against Clinton didn’t do her any favors that November. Sanders wants to see Trump lose but recognizes that he might not, which may spur Sanders to throw his support behind Biden sooner rather than later, avoiding some of the intraparty erosion we saw in the spring of 2016.

We’ll see.