Nate Silver, America's rockstar statistician, has run the numbers and doesn't see how Sanders gets to a win. Silver developed a model he calls the "path-of-least-implausibility" and shares why the math just isn't there for this inspiring candidate.
Via FiveThirtyEight:
To reach a pledged delegate majority, Sanders will have to win most of the delegates from those big states. A major loss in any of them could be fatal to his chances. He could afford to lose one or two of them narrowly, but then he'd need to make up ground elsewhere — he'd probably have to win California by double digits, for example.
Sanders will also need to gain ground on Clinton in a series of medium-sized states such as Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky and New Mexico. Demographics suggest that these states could be close, but close won't be enough for Sanders. He'll need to win several of them easily.
None of this is all that likely. Frankly, none of it is at all likely. If the remaining states vote based on the same demographic patterns established by the previous ones, Clinton will probably gain further ground on Sanders. If they vote as state-by-state polling suggests they will, Clinton could roughly double her current advantage over Sanders and wind up winning the nomination by 400 to 500 pledged delegates.
But things can change, and polls can be wrong — and so it's worth doing the math to see what winning 988 more delegates would look like for Sanders. Call it a path-of-least-implausibility.
