Hey everyone, I'm Dylan Dryer, co-host of The Third Hour of Today, and Mom to Three Wild Boys. I've learned a lot my years as a parent, mostly that I don't have it all figured out yet, and I'm not the only one. This is my new podcast, The Parent Chat. Each week, I sit down with someone new, for honest conversation, and real-world advice about parenting.
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I'm Mark Murray from NBC News. Unlike most lid episodes on Fridays, I'm recording from my home, working here like so many of my fellow journalists, and so many of you. I'm wishing you and your family safety, serenity, and nothing but the best. For today's lid episode, however, I want to turn back to a more familiar topic for me, and that's the 2020 presidential race, namely the daunting, formidable, insurmountable, delegate math that Bernie Sanders now faces in the Democratic nominating race after Tuesday's primaries in Arizona, Florida, and Illinois.
According to the NBC News' count, Joe Biden currently holds a lead of 318 pledged delegates over Bernie Sanders, and you might ask, why is this math so difficult for Sanders to overcome, especially since there are more than 20 contests with some 1,800 delegates up for graphs? Could Sanders easily make up the difference in the remaining contests? Well, here's a two-word answer, why he most likely can't. Proportional allocation.
Unlike Republicans, who often award delegates based on a winner-take-all system, that is, if you win a state, you get all of the delegates. Democrats award theirs proportionally, so if you win a contest 55% to 45%, you get 55% of the delegates while your opponent gets 45%. So the only way to rack up huge delegate halls is to win a state decisively, like Joe Biden did in Tuesday's Florida contest. The former vice president won the state by whopping 39 points on Tuesday, 62% to 23%.
And right now, NBC's decision desk has Biden getting more than a net 100 delegate hall out of the Sunshine State. By comparison, Sanders' seven state wins from New Hampshire, Nevada, California, Colorado, Vermont, Utah, and North Dakota netted him a total of 99 delegates more than Biden, so fewer than what the former vice president took from the single state of Florida. Bottom line, to make up ground, you got to win big, and in states with a big number of delegates. And here's another two-word reason why that's much harder for Sanders than back in 2016.
Fewer caucuses. In 2016, Bernie Sanders was often able to keep close with Hillary Clinton because he'd rack up a decisive victory in caucus states like Colorado or Washington. But this time around, those states and a few others were holding primaries instead of caucuses, which keeps Sanders' margin and his hall smaller than it was in 2016. So now when you hear political reporters and analysts talking about the nearly insurmountable math challenge that Bernie Sanders now faces, you know why?
Proportionate allocation and fewer caucuses. And that math reality explains why Sanders is getting asked questions about the timeline for assessing the state of his campaign, and why he's giving testy answers back. That's a lid for us. We'll be back next week with plenty more political news.
Be safe out there, and best wishes to all of you. Be sure to download us on your favorite podcast app.