Someone asked what Bernie is doing wrong. Answer: Resource allocation

Bernie Sanders resource allocation suggests he’s no longer even trying to win the nomination

For all the twists and turns and calculators involved, the one core truth about democratic primary delegate math is easy enough to understand: all delegates are awarded proportionally. The party has no winner-take-all states. If you win a state by sixty percent, apart from some necessary round-offs, you generally get sixty percent of that state’s delegates. So the state borders are imaginary. Mathematically, “winning” or “losing” a state by a small margin means almost nothing. So why is the Bernie Sanders campaign consistently focusing its resources on trying to win a handful of states, instead of trying to win delegates? It suggests they’re not even trying to win the nomination. So what are they up to?

Here’s but one example. Sanders dumped a ton of time and resources into trying to win Michigan. And it worked, as he pulled off a victory by two percent and came out seven delegates ahead there. But on that same day, he lost Mississippi by a more than sixty percent and came out twenty-six delegates behind there. In total he won nineteen fewer delegates on the day than his opponent Hillary Clinton, and fell further behind her overall. If he had put even marginal resources into Mississippi, he could have closed the gap and lost by perhaps just forty points. He might have ended up losing both states that day, but he’d have done better in the delegate count. And this is a consistent pattern.

Sanders put a major effort into Ohio and Illinois, where he had a chance, but not in the biggest state of Florida, where he was certain to lose. The result: he lost Florida by more than thirty points, meaning he would have fallen further further behind in delegates for the day even if he had pulled off close wins in Ohio and Illinois. It was one thing to try a one off strategy on a news-cycle-isolated state like Michigan, in the hope that winning a prominent state would help out a losing campaign in the perception department. But to keep trying the strategy over and over? It’s not a recipe for even coming close in the delegate math.

The people running the Bernie Sanders campaign surely know at least as much about delegate math as I do, and most certainly more. So it’s not as if they have some basic misunderstanding of how the math works. Their decision to try to win certain states, even if it means falling further behind in the delegate total in the process, has to be intentional. It feels like a tacit admission that they know they’re not going to win the nomination anyway.

Instead they’re banking on landing a few key wins here and there to keep the momentum going in a losing campaign, keeping their most politically naive followers under the impression that there’s still a chance, keeping the donations coming in, and staying in the race longer. This appears to be a matter of accepting and cementing their own defeat for the sake of being able to hang around.

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/bernie-sanders-resource-allocation-suggests-hes-no-long-even-trying-to-win-the-nomination/24173/