More math from Reddit
"I've constructed several hypothetical scenarios of how the future states might play out, based on the 538 data. It helps to show just how far behind Sanders is right now.
Scenario 1 - 538 goals
All of my scenarios will be in a table that looks like this. This is simply the possible future delegate spreads, with a column for Clinton, Sanders, and how much Sanders nets (gains or loses relative to Clinton). This scenario represents if Sanders meets all of 538's original delegate goals exactly. Remember, these are the goals that they decided he could attain if he and Clinton were polling exactly even, nationally. As you can see, if Sanders just meets these goals exactly, he only nets 82 delegates in the remaining states. He's currently at a 325 deficit, so that's nowhere near close enough to make it up. Remember, none of this is even taking into account the super delegates.
Scenario 2 - exceed all goals by 10%
Here is what the future would look like if Sanders exceeds all of his goals by 10%. For example, if 538 said he needed to win by 10% in Arizona, in this table he wins by 20%. As you can see, if he does this, he nets 299 delegates. This is closer to catching up to Clinton, but he would still far short by a little over 20 delegates. That's not enough, since the superdelegates will likely favor the majority winner of the pledged delegates. The Sandernistas can drop right now this fantasy that the superdelegates would change the race from a popularly favored Clinton to a nominated Sanders. No way in hell. If anything, they would stay with Clinton even if Sanders edged her out by a little (by some miracle).
Scenario 3 - win each state by 16%
This shows how the future would look if Sanders wins by a flat 16% in each state--ignoring the 538 demographics. I got this number from recent 538 articles, which said that Sanders needs 58% of the remaining delegates. If he gets 58, Clinton gets 42--hence the 16 point spread. Remember the red cells way back in the "past" spreadsheet? They indicate which states Sanders has already won by at least 16 points. He has only done this in 6 states so far, and now he needs to do it in every remaining state, on average. Sure, the map looks better for him going forward, but not this good.
You'll notice that there's an extra column in this scenario. Those represent the five largest shifts Sanders needs in order to reach a 16% win in the respective states. Thus, it will be hardest to reach this 16% benchmark in New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, California, and New Jersey.
Scenario 4 - win big in the big states
This is what it would look like if Sanders meets all of the 538 goals exactly, but exceeds his goals by 20% in the five biggest remaining states. Note from the previous table that 4 of these 5 states are also the hardest to reach the 16% win benchmark, and are thus the hardest to gain momentum in. Obtaining something like this result is much easier said than done. Nonetheless, if he could do this (not likely), he would just barely make up his deficit. If he underperformed in even one small state, this would still not be enough.
I note that the five biggest remaining states hold 56% of the remaining delegates (due to population size). So these five states are more important than all of the rest, combined. Thus we have,
Scenario 5 - what about the small states?
This is the last scenario. This is what it would look like if Sanders met exactly his goal for the five biggest states, and exceeded his goals in all of the smaller states by 20% (again, exceeded with respect to the 538 benchmarks). Since these represent only 44% of the remaining delegates, it's easy to understand why this scenario does not net Sanders enough delegates. Even if he has these blowouts where he exceeds the 538 benchmarks by 20% in all of these states, it doesn't mean much unless he can get a big state or two by very large margins as well.
This is all I came up with. I might make some posts like this in the future, since it will be easy to update these tables with future results. But I think it's clear that Sanders is losing and will lose, so it's probably not necessary."
https://np.reddit.com/r/enoughsandersspam/comments/4avw76/the_numbers_are_looking_really_bad_for_sanders/