Over the past week, Bernie Sanders’s odds of winning the Democratic primary have collapsed — even as the case for his nomination has become sturdier than ever before.
After hitting a high of nearly 70 percent following the Nevada caucuses, the Vermont senator’s odds of securing a plurality of delegates is now down to 3 percent in FiveThirtyEight’s primary forecast. And the most recent batch of polls makes Nate Silver’s model look a tad generous: In Sanders’s ostensible stronghold of Michigan, Biden’s polling lead is now 24 points; in Missouri, it’s 30; in Mississippi, 50; and Florida, 49. Even in Washington state — where Sanders trounced Clinton by nearly 50 points four years ago — the latest surveys have Uncle Joe narrowly ahead.
And there’s little reason to believe that the burgeoning pandemic and cratering stock markets will bail Bernie out. In a new CNN poll of Democratic voters, Biden leads the Vermont senator on the question of which candidate would be “best to handle a major crisis” by 42 points.
