Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
I know that 538 has the odds of a brokered convention very high still, but it seems quite unlikely now with Pete and Amy dropping out. I suspect that Bloomberg and Warren won't pick up a significant amount of delegates tomorrow and will likely not continue. Unless, it is a razor thin margin the rest of the way, I suspect one of Bernie or Joe will have a majority going into the convention.
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The 538 logic is that Pete and Amy dropping out actually make a brokered convention more likely. There are a lot of states where Warren and Bloomberg, and it some cases, Biden, are polling a little below 15%. 15% is critical, because in many states it's an all-or-nothing threshold you need to reach to get delegates.
To give you an extreme example, if you had a state where Sanders was polling at 48%, Buttigieg, Warren, Biden, Bloomberg all at 13%, Sanders would potentially get 100% of the delegates*. But if Buttigieg drops out, and his voters are split roughly evenly between the other four, then Sanders comes out of it with more in the ballpark of 50% of the delegates, and the other three would each get around 15% each. Basically, the more states where more candidates are able to hit 15%, the more likely there's a brokered convention.
*This 15% percent rule is applied both at the state and precinct level so it's a little more complicated than this simplification.