Bernie Sanders Is Currently Winning the Democratic Primary Race, and I'll Prove It to You

That's about 12%.

So how did Bernie Sanders do on Election Day in Arizona?

As of the writing of this essay (2:45 AM ET), Sanders was leading Clinton in Election Day voting in Arizona 50.2% to 49.8%, with just under 75,000 votes (about 17.3% of all Election Day votes) counted.

So imagine, for a moment, that early votes were reported to the media last rather than first. Which, of course, they quite easily could be, given that they're less -- rather than more -- reflective of the actual state of opinion on Election Day. Were early votes reported last rather than first, Arizona as of 2:45 AM ET would have been considered not only too close to call but a genuine nail-biter. In fact, only 400 or so Election Day votes were separating the two Democratic candidates at that point -- though the momentum with each new vote counted was quite clearly in Sanders' favor.

So the question becomes, why does any of this matter? Does the point being made here -- that Bernie Sanders is as or more popular than Hillary in both all the states he won and many of the states he didn't -- gain Sanders a single delegate? Does it move him one inch closer to being President?

No.

What it does do is explain why the Clinton-Sanders race is a 5-point race nationally -- just a hair from being a statistical tie, given the margin of error -- despite the media treating Clinton's nomination as a foregone conclusion.

What it does do is explain how Clinton is "beating" Sanders among American voters despite having a -13 favorability rating nationally, as compared to Sanders' +11 rating. That dramatic difference is possible because in favorability polling, pollsters only count voters who say they know enough about a candidate to form an opinion. That eliminates the sort of "early voters" who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton before having much of a handle on who Bernie Sanders is.

And what it does do is explain why Sanders outperforms Clinton against Donald Trump in nearly every state where head-to-head general-election polling data is available. While some of this is undoubtedly due to the fact that Sanders beats Clinton by between 30 and 40 points among Independents -- itself a major warning sign for a Clinton candidacy this fall -- the rest is explained by the fact that when voters come to know Bernie Sanders as well as they already know Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, they tend to prefer him to these two by clear margins.

The Hillary camp, and Hillary supporters, are justly excited about how their candidate is performing in the delegate horse-race. The problem is that that excitement is quickly becoming the sort of arrogance that will in fact endanger Hillary's candidacy for President. Both she and her team -- including all her millions of supporters -- should consider the fact that Hillary does not, outside the deep-red Deep South, do particularly well among voters when they're given any other reasonable alternative. The fact that early voting statutes and media reporting of elections in America favors the maintenance of the illusion that Hillary remains popular when voters become familiar with other credible options does not excuse ignorance of the reality; certainly, it won't help Democrats in November.

And given that a demagogue like Donald Trump is the likely Republican nominee, that's a scary thought for many Americans. Sanders voters should want -- and most do want -- a Clinton campaign that understands its weaknesses sufficiently to ameliorate them in a general election, should Clinton be the Democratic nominee. Right now that's clearly not happening, and the national media is unfortunately enabling the persistence and expansion of these troubling blind-spots.

Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about super-delegates. These are folks who are supposed to be supporting whichever candidate has the best chance of winning in November. We already know, per head-to-head general-election polling, that the better candidate to run against Donald Trump is Bernie Sanders; however, many super-delegates (and most of the media) dismiss general election polling this early on, even though Sanders' commanding lead over Trump is clearly statistically relevant. (This is especially true given that his name recognition lags well behind Trump's.)

But what about the argument, implicitly being made to super-delegates now, and likely to be made to them explicitly in Philadelphia this summer, that Bernie Sanders has, broadly speaking, out-performed Hillary Clinton in Election Day voting? Given that Election Day voting in the spring is the very same sort of high-information voting that will occur in November, you'd think super-delegates would be quite interested to know that, in live voting, Bernie Sanders beats Hillary Clinton more often than not.