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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion editorial

EDITORIAL: The numbers don't lie

In one corner, the Republican primaries have been getting all the attention lately as the country waits to see if anyone can stop Donald Trump.

On the other side of the aisle, the Democrats are having a similar battle.

Bernie Sanders, frequently heralded as the Millenials’ dream candidate, has held his own against Hillary Clinton, the early 
favorite.

But as the states slowly but surely divide their delegates, it is looking like Sanders die-hards are going to have to make a choice between the establishment and their grassroots 
campaign.

We believe Sanders supporters must understand the reality of Sanders’ chances of winning the nomination and decide how their support for Sanders will affect Clinton’s 
momentum.

Sanders has been doing better in the primaries than many had expected.

His supporters experienced a jolt of reaffirming hope when he took Washington at 25 delegates, Alaska at 13 delegates and Hawaii at 18 delegates in a single day, the best day of his campaign so far.

He currently holds 1,011 delegates to Clinton’s 1,712. Either candidate will need 2,383 delegates to win.

This new development might distract people from the lead Clinton maintains.

Election statisticians and strategists seem to be coming down on Clinton’s side.

The most notable example is Nate Silver.

Silver, statistician and editor-in-chief of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight blog, is famous for correctly predicting President Obama’s primary win in 2008 and the 2012 general election results 
by state.

In a recent post, Silver ran the numbers and came up with a disheartening conclusion for those who are “feeling the Bern.”

Silver said 988 more delegates for Sanders is little more than a pipe dream.

Nine-hundred-eighty-eight is a little less than 57 percent of available delegates, which means Bernie would have to pull landslide wins in the majority of the remaining states, and a major loss would be “fatal to his chances.”

A lot of the states in which he has a clear lead have relatively small numbers of delegates, and Silver said 65 percent of the remaining states, like New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have Clinton leading the polls.

Silver is no wizard. He’s been wrong before.

In 2015 he claimed Trump had almost no chance of winning the GOP nomination, and now Trump is likely to be the Republican candidate.

Perhaps the same will be true of Sanders and he will be able to pull off a miracle.

But at this point in the race even the most die-hard Bernie fans have to address the smallest seed of doubt.

They have to begin thinking about what their choice will be if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination.

He has already said he will not run as a third-party candidate, so voting for him outright won’t be an option.

Many Sanders supporters have strong objections to Clinton.

Many people, on the Editorial Board and elsewhere, think she can’t be trusted and that her policy track record leaves much to be 
desired.

If Sanders loses the primary, his supporters will have to make a tough 
decision.

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