Bernie Still Can Win The Nom, But It'll Be Hard

Those voters who were #feelingthebern may be feeling some disappointment after the Super Tuesday results, with candidate Hillary Clinton winning seven states to Bernie Sanders' four. After Clinton's March 1 victories, the delegate count is also increasing in the former Secretary of State's favor — she sits at a steady 1,001 delegates compared to Sanders' 371. Clinton's boost in numbers is also thanks to backing from a large group of superdelegates, which make up about half of her current delegate support. So the question stands, can Sanders still win the Democratic nomination after less than stellar results on Super Tuesday?

The short answer is yes, but it will be a hard-fought victory. The good news for Sanders supporters is that there are still quite a lot of primary and caucus states left. Taking into account both delegates and superdelegates, about 75 percent of delegates are still up for grabs. If superdelegates are not accounted for, roughly 64 percent of delegates are left within the Democratic primary election.

There are still 2,383 delegates needed for the nomination. And though this Super Tuesday victory for Clinton may have spelled out an easy defeat for other candidates, the same isn't necessarily true for Sanders. Because the Democratic primary doesn't operate under a winner-take-all system, the Vermont senator still has time to rack up a series of smaller victories by the July nomination. It would be a similar strategy to the one President Barack Obama used to defeat Clinton and eventually cinch the nomination in 2008.

For instance, Sanders still has a strong chance in many of the blue collar states coming up, such as Michigan, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. He also proved to be the Super Tuesday winner in many of the states that vote Democrat or swing, a sign that additional victories could certainly be on the horizon.

Sanders' momentum isn't something to be underestimated, either. His team started from a place of practical national anonymity (cue Drake's "Started from the Bottom"), and Sanders was most likely only a household name for those following politics closely or his constituents in Vermont even just a year ago. But he's proven projections wrong time and time again by giving Clinton a run for her money in a nomination race that once seemed all but inevitable for the former Secretary of State.

Sanders' battle to the nomination is admittedly an uphill one. Even still, both the numbers and previous trends show that it's much too early to try to count the Vermont senator out of the nomination race just yet.