Bernie-Mania's Barrier: Democratic Delegate Math--or to quote the infamous Bill Clinton

quote: It's Arithmetic!

National Politics|By David Wasserman,

January 21, 2016


Bernie-Mania's Barrier: Democratic Delegate Math

http://cookpolitical.com/story/9179

In the wake of new Iowa and New Hampshire polls showing Bernie Sanders gaining, some say it's time for Hillary Clinton to hit the panic button. "Clinton should ABSOLUTELY be nervous about the state of the race with less than three weeks before voters in Iowa head to the caucuses," the Washington Post's Fix blog blared last week.

There are just two obstacles in this theory's way: demographics and delegate arithmetic.

In poll after poll, Sanders's best group within the Democratic Party is liberal whites. Unfortunately for Sanders, Iowa and New Hampshire couldn't be much further on the extreme end of the party's demographic or ideological spectrum. According to our estimates, based on past exit polls and Census data, there is only one state where whites who self-identify as liberals make up a higher share of the Democratic primary electorate than Iowa and New Hampshire.

You guessed it: Vermont.

In fact, 98 percent of pledged Democratic delegates will come from states with lower shares of liberal whites than Iowa and New Hampshire. Just 447 of 4,051 pledged Democratic delegates - 11 percent - are tied to results in states or districts with higher shares of college-educated whites than New Hampshire. Moreover, just 13 percent of pledged Democratic delegates will be awarded in caucus states like Iowa, which as 2008 proved, tend to bring out more liberal participants than primaries.

In other words, if Sanders prevails narrowly in Iowa or New Hampshire, his support among liberal whites and in college towns - essentially Portlandia - would be entirely consistent with a scenario in which he also gets clobbered by Clinton nationally.