(PresidentialWire.com) – The withdrawal of Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar from the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee has slashed the chances of a contested convention. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who suffered a few blows in early voting states during the primaries, is once again the frontrunner.
Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders fell victim to the consolidation of support from multiple candidates and now looks to lose.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s forecasting model, which was updated on Friday morning, there is now just a 10% chance that a Democratic candidate will not achieve the 1,991 delegates required to take the nomination. On Monday, that same forecasting model showed a 69% chance of a brokered convention, which demonstrates just how powerful the endorsement of Buttigieg and Klobuchar has been for Biden.
According to their forecast, based on a collection of polls, Joe Biden is expected to receive around 2,290 delegates. That puts him several hundred ahead of the required 1,991. Bernie Sanders could achieve 1,477. And, should Tulsi Gabbard choose to stay in the race, she may expect to take home 37 delegates in the remaining primary states.
That gives Biden an 88% chance of securing the nomination, while Bernie Sanders has only a 2% chance of taking the nomination his supporters feel he is entitled to.
Before Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg dropped out of the race, both campaigns considered the very real possibility of a contested convention a way of potentially taking the nomination. Warren’s former campaign manager Roger Lau distributed a campaign memo that explained how the senator was planning to stay in the race as the results from Super Tuesday would make the “reality” of the race clear.
“No candidate will likely have a path to the majority of delegates needed to win an outright claim to the Democratic nomination,” Lau said in the note.
Michael Bloomberg also admitted that a contested nomination was likely the only way he could have won the nomination.
But, Super Tuesday didn’t work out for either Warren or Bloomberg and both candidates threw their support behind Biden to stop socialist Sanders taking the reins. As many have noted, Sanders as a presidential candidate would not only lose the Democrats the presidential election but could hurt Democratic candidates down the ballot.
