Sanders has only 6 days left to close the chasm in South Carolina; 9 days to close the chasm nationally.

                As the results from Nevada came in on the Democratic side, something became exceptionally clear. Saturday was not just a very good day for Hillary Clinton, it provided a piece of information that while not unexpected does put a pretty fine point on the challenge for Sanders.

 African-American voters, according to the entrance poll, voted for Hillary Clinton 76% to 22%.   Entrance polling should be taken with a grain of salt, as the controversy over the entrance poll with respect to Hispanics reveals [this blog thinks Team Clinton won Nevada Hispanics by the way}. Nonetheless, Clinton’s success with African-Americans was big enough, and a big enough surprise, to enable Senator Clinton to win the Nevada 4^th, a six delegate district, by a large enough margin to gain better than an even split of the delegates.  Her 4-2 margin helped her win the overall delegate count by 20-15.  

The Nevada 4th was 13.6% African American, and the caucus goers were estimated at 20% African-American with perhaps 25% as the possible upper limit.

Even if Sanders actually outperformed the entrance poll and lost African-Americans only 70% to 30%, this is still an absolute disaster for his campaign.  In South Carolina such a margin would likely net Hillary Clinton at least 11 delegates with outer limit possibilities far higher.  According to the Bernie Barrier chart,  http://cookpolitical.com/story/9179 Sanders is now 15 delegates off the pace needed to earn him a tie amongst pledged delegates.  A loss in South Carolina of only 11 delegates would put Sanders another 6 delegates off pace.   And a loss by 11 delegates would be likely, even if Sanders cuts the deficit from 70 % to 30% to 65% to 35%.   We can defer discussion of the significance of the African-American vote across all the primaries since the South Carolina story already makes clear just how decisive this vote will be.      

Sanders has only 9 days to close this gap across the March 1 states, and in some ways less time because early voting has commenced in Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.  African-Americans are more likely than others to take advantage of early voting.  This bottom line is that Sanders’ troubles with African-American alones, if not solved and solved quickly, can single handedly end any chance the Sanders campaign has to win the pledged delegates.  9 days is certainly a lot of time in politics, but this has been a red flag waving for months.  Sanders’ win in New Hampshire did not fix it, and it is hard to imagine what will.   We will keep making predictions on the D.C. side throughout the campaign,  just don’t expect the commentary to be as voluminous.

Nevada Republican Caucus preview coming soon.