538: A Sanders Comeback Would Be Unprecedented

[hack89]

Historically speaking, Democratic primary races do not have many twists and turns. Rather, the eventual winner tends to take an early lead — on or before Super Tuesday — and stay there. Runner-ups can kick for a while, but they tend to concede the race by February or early March.

As it stands, Sanders is firmly in runner-up territory. He is losing 9 million to 12 million among those who have already voted, and polls show him lagging by an average of 8.8 percentage points in the states yet to vote1. Sanders has gained substantially in national polls but is still the less popular candidate (outside of the Bernietopia that is social media2).

The result is pretty striking: After the early days of the campaign, no underdog has ever won the Democratic nomination. A true come-from-behind victory would show up on this chart as a green line (winners) wandering above the 50 percent line (falling behind) before crossing back over (catching up) and veering toward the bottom of the chart. Instead, after the mad scramble for the first 10 percent of delegates, no candidate ever crosses over the 50 percent line. That is, the king stay the king. (Of course, there haven’t been that many Democratic primaries in the modern era, so I wouldn’t interpret this data as some type of iron-clad rule.)

The reason for this is pretty simple: Proportional allocation of delegates makes comebacks really, really hard. You can’t just notch wins in a string of states, as Sanders did in late March and early April. You have to start consistently trouncing your opponent by large margins in every contest. You need, well, a political revolution.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-sanders-comeback-would-be-unprecedented/

[CrowCityDem]

1. When even winning is losing, you have practically zero chance.