The early Democrat primary schedule was designed to favor Hillary Clinton as an establishment candidate. But the shocking win by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)’in Michigan, and the fact that the primaries after March 15 heavily favoring an outsider, means Sanders should have the momentum to sweep California and five other primaries on June 7 to pass Clinton in the delegate race and seize the party’s nomination from her grasp.
Both parties have done everything possible to front-load advantages for establishment candidates in their primary schedules. But former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush was fired by “The Donald,” and former Democrat Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appears to have peaked, and is now trending down against Sanders, who wasn’t officially even a Democrat until last year.
Clinton on March 8 picked up 81 delegates to Sanders’s 64, but she was expected to win 113 to Sanders’s 46. Clinton so far has won 739 delegates and 12 contests, about 57 percent of delegates and contests. Sanders has 566 delegates and 9 contests, about 43 percent of delegates and contests.
But the Democrat Party takes extra precautions to give Democratic party elites, like “distinguished party leaders” and the Democrats in Congress, the opportunity to put their fingers on the scale with 717 superdelegates. Their goal is to prevent any insurgent candidates, like George McGovern in 1972 or Jimmy Carter in 1976, from getting the 2,383 delegates required to be nominated as the Democrats’ national standard-bearer.
Currently, 461 superdelegates have publicly proclaimed they are voting for Clinton and only 25 have committed for Sanders. In other words, even though Sanders has won 43 percent of delegates and contests, he has only secured 5.1 percent of superdelegates.
But despite the rigged primary schedule and insider support that has favored Clinton, Sanders has cut Clinton’s national polling lead from 24 percent at year end to just 8 on the eve of the March 8 primaries. Sanders’s success in Michigan is bound to narrow Clinton’s poll lead to less than percent, for his best showing.
Clinton was expected to beat Sanders easilyin Michigan, because the electorate was expected to be 25 and 33 percent African-American, a demographic Clinton has been winning by about 86 percent of the vote.
But according to “MattTX,” who writes for the highly influential left-wing Daily Kos website, the Democrat primaries after March 15 move West, where Clinton will face a demographic that is composed more of the rebelling middle class voters that have responded to Sanders’s message –namely, that Bill and Hillary Clinton’s foreign trade agreements and Wall Street deals eroded good paying jobs and economic security.
MattX breaks down state-by-state projections (Cclick here to see chart), to highlight that the Democratic contest will come down to a June 7 sweep by Sanders of the California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota primaries. He is said to be demographically favored in those states.
Hillary Clinton may still have a lead for the Democrat nomination due to her super-delegate haul heading into the July 27 Democrat Convention in Philadelphia. But MattTX projects that with Sanders holding at least a 3 percent national poll by the Convention, it is “substantially less likely than commonly thought that super-delegates would be willing to give the nomination to Clinton if Sanders wins the most delegates.”