I did a little math this morning. A candidate needs 1,991 delegates to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot at the convention in July. From today (March 11) until June 6 (when the last primary is held) there are 2,115 delegates remaining to be won.
Joe Biden is currently ahead in the polls in many of the remaining states, but let us imagine that Bernie Sanders received half of the remaining delegates and Biden got the other half. So that would be 1,057.5 delegates (we'll ignore the fraction) to split evenly between Biden and Sanders, to add to the number of delegates that they've already won.
According to the delegate count at the Politico website, Biden currently has 898 delegates and Sanders has 745. (Those numbers will increase for both candidates throughout the week as votes that have been already cast are still being counted, and I will update this blog accordingly. This entry was last updated on 3/17/20 at 11:28am.) (3/18/20 UPDATE: I won't be updating this particular blog entry further. You can check the link above for the current delegate totals. As of today, it has been said that Sanders would need to win around 60% of the remaining delegates in order to win the nomination.)
So, if we add half of all the remaining primaries' delegates evenly between the two candidates, it looks like this:
BIDEN: 1,955 delegates (i.e., 898 [current delegate count] + 1,057 [future delegates])
SANDERS: 1,802 delegates (i.e., 745 [current] + 1,057 [future])
Since 1,991 delegates are needed to win the nomination outright, both candidates would fall short in this scenario. However, Biden would be only 36 delegates short whereas Sanders would be 189 delegates short.
In reality, though, it's highly unlikely that Sanders will receive half of all the remaining delegates, given that Biden is favored in most of the remaining states. In the states that Biden has won so far, he has usually won around 10 more delegates than Sanders per state (and sometimes much more than that, like in Michigan where Biden has received 20 more delegates than Sanders).
Next Tuesday (March 17), four states vote: Arizona (67 delegates), Florida (219), Illinois (155) and Ohio (136), for a total of 577 delegates up for grabs. (Update: Ohio's primary has been delayed and will not occur on March 17.)
Here are the results of the most recent poll taken in each of those states, to give an idea of how they will vote on March 17:
ARIZONA (poll, 3/10-15/20): Biden 50%, Sanders 37%
FLORIDA (poll, 3/11-12/20): Biden 65%, Sanders 27%
ILLINOIS (poll, 3/11-12/20): Biden 57%, Sanders 36%
If these numbers are accurate, Biden could have a delegate landslide on Tuesday, ensuring a comfortable path to the nomination. This development not only would increase Biden's delegate lead over Sanders, but would eliminate the possibility of Biden falling short of the 1,991 delegates needed to win the nomination (as outlined above with the "36 delegates short" scenario).
After March 17, it may become mathematically inevitable that Biden eventually reaches the magic number of 1,991. The question then will be whether Sanders remains in the race once the math makes his own victory an impossibility.
How long will it take for Joe Biden to receive the 1,991 delegates required to win the Democratic nomination? FiveThirtyEight forecasts that he will receive that amount by April 28, when six states hold their primaries (including New York and Pennsylvania).
One of the problems in predicting how each candidate will perform in the remaining 30 states/territories is that polls aren't available in almost half of them. And some of the polls that are available were conducted prior to Super Tuesday (March 3) when many of the second-tier candidates dropped out of the race. Some of the available polling is from last year, when there were around 20 candidates running, and therefore is not reliable for predicting outcomes today.
Here are the results of the most recent polls taken in each of the remaining states/territories to hold primaries after March 17. The name of the candidate ahead in the poll is in bold type. The amount of delegates available in each state is listed next to the name of the state. It's possible that the coronavirus will impact the amount of delegates awarded to each state (as listed below) due to the moving of primary voting dates. The DNC has warned that states that move their primaries past June 9 could face “a penalty that would include a state losing at least half of its delegates.”
March 29:
PUERTO RICO - 51 (no poll available) [primary is "likely to be postponed to April 26"]
April 4:
ALASKA - 15 (no poll available)
HAWAII - 24 (no poll available)
WYOMING - 14 (no recent poll available)
April 7:
WISCONSIN - 84 (poll, 3/10-11/20): Biden 55%, Sanders 39%
April 28:
CONNECTICUT - 60 (poll, 12/16/19-1/2/20): Biden 33%, Sanders 19%
DELAWARE - 21 (poll, 11/15-25/19): Biden 35%, Sanders 13%
MARYLAND - 96 (poll, 2/22-28/20): Biden 19%, Sanders 23%
NEW YORK - 274 (poll, 2/16-20/20): Biden 13%, Sanders 25% [primary "may be postponed" to June 23]
PENNSYLVANIA - 186 (poll, 3/6-8/20): Biden 59%, Sanders 31%
RHODE ISLAND - 26 (no poll available)
May 2:
GUAM - 7 (no poll available)
KANSAS - 39 (poll, 3/10-11/20): Biden 59%, Sanders 35%
May 5:
INDIANA - 82 (very old poll, 4/29/19-5/5/19): Biden 33%, Sanders 23%
May 12:
NEBRASKA - 29 (no poll available)
WEST VIRGINIA - 28 (no poll available)
May 19:
GEORGIA - 105 [originally scheduled for March 24] (poll, 2/12/20): Biden 32%, Sanders 14%
OREGON - 61 (very old poll, 3/18-19/19): Biden 26%, Sanders 27%
June 2:
MONTANA - 19 (no recent poll)
NEW JERSEY - 126 (poll, 2/12-16/20): Biden 16%, Sanders 25%
NEW MEXICO - 34 (poll, 1/3-6/20): Biden 27%, Sanders 28%
OHIO (poll, 3/10-13/20): Biden 56%, Sanders 35% ["proposed new date of Ohio primary"]
SOUTH DAKOTA - 16 (no poll available)
WASHINGTON, D.C. - 20 (no poll available)
June 6:
U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS - 7 (no poll available)
June 20:
LOUISIANA - 54 [originally scheduled for April 4] (no poll available)
June 23:
KENTUCKY - 54 [originally scheduled for May 19] (no poll available)
As noted earlier: "States rescheduling their primaries past a June 9 deadline set by the Democratic National Committee risk losing half of their delegates to the convention." So that could affect some of the numbers listed here.
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