It’s kind of remarkable how much Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s maps of support overlap with each other. Both of them added Arizona to their winning columns last night, and both of them got slaughtered in Utah. Clinton was slaughtered in Idaho, too, much like Trump was crushed there on March 8th.
Clinton actually had a pretty bad showing yesterday. It doesn’t look good to be losing 20%-80% in Utah and 21%-78% in Idaho. The margins were so big that they more than wiped out her advantage in Arizona and allowed Sanders to net way more delegates than expected. It was a repeat of 2008, when Obama’s advantage in Idaho erased Hillary’s gains in the much more delegate-rich (and expensive) New Jersey.
But it doesn’t really matter. Sanders is still behind by more than 300 delegates, not including the supers. She already has the nomination locked up. The reason last night was important for Sanders is that no one can look at those results and tell him that he should just get out. A candidate who’s still winning states with 80% of the votes against the presumptive nominee has the right to take his case to the convention, and that’s what I expect Sanders to do.
