Mar. 18, 2020, at 12:52 PM
Election Update: Biden’s Delegate Lead Is Now Nearly Insurmountable
It might be a while before the next primary is held, but the race is all but over.

By Geoffrey Skelley
Filed under 2020 Election

With Tuesday’s elections now in the rearview mirror, we’ve turned the FiveThirtyEight forecast back on. It now accounts for the results in Florida and Illinois, plus partial results in Arizona. But overall, very little has changed. Biden entered the March 17 primaries as an overwhelming favorite to win the nomination, and he remains in the same position today.

Our updated forecast shows Biden’s average pledged delegate count just shy of 2,400 delegates — about the same as before. A candidate needs 1,991 pledged delegates to clinch the majority, so Biden looks set to easily clear that bar even though it might now be a while before the next primary. Sanders did gain very slightly in our average delegate forecast — and some of that is because of how bullish the model has been on Biden — but his chances of winning a majority essentially did not change.
Biden is still an overwhelming favorite to win

Change in our forecast for the top two candidates after the March 17 primaries, as of 10 a.m. Eastern on March 18

[data table here]

The chances that no candidate wins a majority also inched up, but again, we’re talking about tiny shifts that aren’t all that meaningful in the grand scheme of things.

In terms of the pledged delegates that have been awarded so far, Biden has won about 300 more than Sanders, which is a nearly insurmountable lead. To claim the nomination, Sanders would need not only to win a bunch of states, but to do so by very large margins. And after yesterday’s races, there’s no reason to think that’s going to start happening.

[more at link]