With Iowa and New Hampshire behind us, the outcome of the Democratic nominating process remains unclear. Accordingly, we decided to lay out what we regard as the most likely scenarios going forward.
Perhaps the most likely scenario is what we will call the Bernie Sanders plurality scenario. Under this scenario, Sanders continues to win the popular vote in most, but not all of the states, but falls short of a majority in most contests. Former Vice President Biden stays in the race and starts picking up delegates and a few first or second place finishes across the South. Likewise, Bloomberg picks up steam and runs well in states like New York, Florida and Connecticut. Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Warren also stay in the race and pick up delegates along the way as well. The new proportional Democratic delegate allocation system leads to a splintered electorate with no candidate winning a majority. Indeed, we think Sanders is likely to have the most delegates with approximately 1500 out of 3980 total delegates. We believe that Buttigieg, Biden, Bloomberg and Warren will all have a sizable number of delegates ranging from 1200 to 300 assuming they stay in. The most visible sign that this scenario is going to happen will be on March 3 Super Tuesday if three or four candidates win individual states with Sanders leading with about 500 of the 1358 delegates at stake. This will lead to a contested convention where Sanders is likely to be the nominee given his popular vote and delegate lead, but he would likely have to strike a few deals with other top candidates (including the Vice President selection) to secure the nomination.
The second scenario is an outright Sanders victory. Here, the key will be for Sanders to rack up a clear win in Nevada and start getting closer to 40-50% of the popular vote. If Sanders can then also win South Carolina, other candidates such as Biden, Klobuchar and Warren might exit the race and give Sanders a chance to consolidate his support against Bloomberg and Buttigieg. Then on Super Tuesday, Sanders might win close to 700 to 800 delegates. In a three way race between Sanders, Bloomberg and Buttigieg, we think Sanders might be able to garner enough delegates that the other candidates would drop out, recognizing that Sanders has such a commanding lead that no one else could possibly be nominated. We could see Sanders winning 1800 to 2100 of the delegates, either just enough to get the nomination outright or close enough where other candidates all concede and endorse Sanders.
The third scenario is that the establishment unites around one of the other candidates and the race becomes largely a two way race between Sanders and the establishment choice, probably Buttigieg or Bloomberg. We think this scenario has a better chance of occurring if Biden, Klobuchar and Warren drop out earlier, maybe before or right after Super Tuesday. The longer they stay in, the less likely that someone can consolidate the anti-Sanders vote. If the establishment candidate could get in a two way race with Sanders, it is certainly possible that they could defeat him and end up with sufficient delegates to score an outright win or clear plurality of the delegates. One way for this to occur would be for either Buttigieg to score much better than expected in Nevada or South Carolina, or if Bloomberg emerges on Super Tuesday as the clear alternative to Sanders.
The final scenario is that no candidate, including Sanders, wins more than about 25% of the delegates. The delegate count could be split between four or five candidates each with 500 to l000 delegates. This result would lead to a wide open brokered convention with the result determined after significant back-room politicking and multiple ballot votes. Under this scenario, a compromise candidate such as Warren, Klobuchar, Buttigieg or even Biden could emerge.
To date, the Democratic delegate math has Buttigieg in first place with 23 delegates, Sanders with 21, Warren in third with 8, Klobuchar in fourth with 7 and Biden in fifth with 6. Next week, Nevada will award 36 more delegates. Sanders is expected to win in Nevada but the key will be by how much and whether Biden can hang on for a second place finish or if that goes to Buttigieg. A week later, South Carolina will award 54 delegates with Biden still the favorite, followed by 1358 delegates across 16 contests on March 3rd. By March 4th, we should have a pretty good indication of which of these scenarios is most likely. For now, we give scenario 1 (“Bernie Plurality”) about a 40% likelihood, scenario 2 (“Bernie Win”) a 25% likelihood, scenario 3 (“Establishment Win”) a 20% likelihood, and scenario 4 (“Brokered Convention with no Front Runner”) a 15% likelihood.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 