So she's the Queen of the Confederacy. Confederate states are worth on average half the delegates per capita of Union states in the Democratic Primary. General Lee's onslaught is over. There are no more slave states left.
Clinton's still the odds-on favorite. But Sanders will only close the gap. She won 72% of the delegates from the Confederacy on average. He needs 58% of the free states to beat her. He's averaging 56%. He probably won't win. But at this point, it's like calling the Civil War before Gettysburg.
The Republicans wanted to shift the races to the right by front-loading the south all before March 15th this year for the first time in history.
They were too clever by half, and they gave themselves Trump.
Clinton hasn't won by more than 7 points outside of the South, but she has lost by more than 20 points in a lot of places in the North.
A map like 2008 that put southern states mixed throughout the calendar might have given Jeb! a chance and would have a closer to 50/50 sanders/clinton split.
Now all it did was drum out all the establishment Republicans and probably Sanders too, unless his supporters don't give a shit and work and donate through the gap to pull off an unlikely upset in delegates.
All-in-all, I think the entire media narrative has put way too much weight on the south, as it has dominated the early delegate count making Trump, Cruz, and Clinton the obvious beneficiaries to everyone else's disadvantage (Rubio, Kasich, Jeb!, Sanders).
But southern states are worth disproportionately more delegates per capita for Republicans, and their primaries turn increasingly winner-take-all, so good luck stumping the Trump.
Democrats stay proportional, and southern states are worth surprisingly few delegates per capita, so watch and be shocked how New Jersey is worth about as many delegates as Virginia and Arkansas put together.
Like I said, Sanders is probably going to lose this thing. But if he hangs in and still has donors and volunteers come June, he's only going to close the delegate gap significantly, even if that's not enough.
PS, the next 8 states are:
That's about as many delegates as tonight, with a lot of strong states for Sanders.
He's probably not going to catch up. But it is going to be a game. And the narrative this time next month will be "can he catch up?" even if the narrative this next week will be "should he bow out?"