PHILADELPHIA — Things will get worse for Bernie Sanders before they get better — if they ever do.
Bruised and battered but soldiering on after last week’s rout in New York, Sanders is bracing for another rough night Tuesday, when Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is favored to win most or all of the five states that hold Democratic primaries in the Northeast.
At stake are 384 pledged delegates, nearly twice as many as the 247 in New York during the last primary race. Ahead of a relatively quiet May, Tuesday will be last major allocation of delegates until June 7, when California and six other states hold contests on what is nearly the last day of campaigning in the Democratic primary.
“If you come out to vote tomorrow and drag your friends and your aunts and your uncles and your co-workers, we’re going to win here in Pennsylvania,” Sanders told a couple thousand people at an election even rally on the campus of Drexel University here Monday night.
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Sanders’ strategy was so focused on momentum that it left little to fall back on when momentum was not on Sanders’ side.
Clinton currently leads in most polls in all five states — and by double digits in the two largest, Pennsylvania and Maryland. In Pennsylvania, a new NBC News poll shows Clinton up 15 percentage points.
Four of the five races Tuesday are closed primaries, which allow only registered Democrats to participate. Sanders performs best with independent voters and has lost every single closed primary this year, including in the Empire State, where supporters blamed the tight rules for Sanders’ loss.
The Vermont senator enjoys his best prospects in Rhode Island, thanks to its open primary and 85 percent white electorate, a demographic that generally plays well for Sanders. But even there, where he held a large rally Sunday, what little polling does exist paints a mixed picture.
Of course, polls also showed Clinton 20 percentage points ahead in Michigan, even though she ended up losing in a major upset last month. Sanders is hoping for a repeat, though polls have been right more often than they’ve been wrong this year.
“I am thrilled to be here in Philadelphia with all of you,” Clinton said Monday night in the courtyard of the Philadelphia’s iconic city hall. “And I am delighted to be in this beautiful setting on this spring evening, because it makes us all feel like there will be a new beginning, doesn’t it?”
“If you vote for me tomorrow, I will stand up and fight for you and for our future through this campaign and into the White House. Let’s go seize the future together,” she said.
Pennsylvania has always been good to the Clintons, giving both her and her husband crucial wins in 1992, 1996, and 2008 in both primaries are generals. Eight years ago, it was the state that kept Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary after a string of losses to Barack Obama, when the Keystone Stated delivered her a 10-point victory.
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