Hillary Clinton Is Storming The Delegate Count

Hillary Clinton won big Tuesday night. Not only did she win four of five states, but in Maryland and Delaware she beat Barack Obama's vote count from 2008. Remember how he went on to win the nomination? It looks like she's closer than ever to following his path to the Convention in July and then the White House in November. All that stands in the way are 378 pledged delegates. That's all she needs to win to get the majority of the pledged delegates. But when will Clinton get all the delegates she needs?

She may be awarded a few more delegates from Tuesday once all the results are in, making things even easier. But as things stand now, Clinton just needs 37 percent of the remaining delegates to win a majority. As the Associated Press pointed out, she could lose every remaining primary contest by a wide margin and still clinch the nomination. Given her nationwide poll numbers, she'll probably do way better than that. Either way, though, she'll clinch it on June 7. That's because before then, there are only 302 delegates up for grabs. So even if she won them all, she'd still be 76 short.

On June 7, 694 delegates are up for grabs thanks to the delegate-rich states like California and (to a lesser extent) New Jersey. Using FiveThirtyEight's delegate targets, Clinton will have won at least 139 more delegates in the states voting between now and then, leaving her lacking just 239.

So she'll probably win way more than she needs. That means that even if Clinton won just over half of California's delegates and Sanders got every vote from every other state voting that day, Clinton would still be the nominee. So June 7 it is.

Ironically, June 7 is probably a sore date for Clinton. That's actually the day she conceded to President Obama back in 2008, which really does show how similar the campaigns have been. She's followed his pathway to the nomination.

The thing to watch will be how many more delegates Clinton wins than Obama did. He finished with 51 percent, or 1,828.5. That year a majority of pledged delegates was just 1,785. Clinton currently has nearly 55 percent of the delegates assigned so far in the race, or 1,648.

Sanders seems to have figured out that he'll be done officially by June 7. There's no plausible way for him to win the nomination at this point. He announced Tuesday night that he'll stay in the race "until the last vote is cast," but because he thinks he can be nominee. He wants to influence the Democratic platform to be more progressive.

So, officially Hillary will need to keep campaigning, but she has it in the bag already. You just need to wait until June 7 for it to be official.