I'm pretty sure Bernie's strategy is win with 30% of the vote. (Ie the Trump strategy). The issue is, proportional allocation means he's never going to get close to a majority of pledged delegates. His best bet is a fractured field where he can go to the convention with the most delegates (but nowhere near an overall majority) and then pretty much dare the superdelegates not to give it to him. It would be the ultimate irony, not gonna lie.
The biggest issue is that there needs to be some states he wins by more than 2-4 points. Like, NH is probably his best state, second only to Vermont. He's still polling in that 20-25% bracket. Winning a state by 3 points in a field with multiple viable candidates is not good for margins. Like, if the current NH average holds, he's going to get maybe 5 more delegates than Biden and Pete.
The other issue is, even as people drop out....Bernie is not killing it in second choice. Like, if you look at first round vs second round in Iowa, he did the worst of the top three in that metric. By a lot. He got screwed out of so many delegates in some caucuses because he could only pick up 1 or 2 extra people, where Pete and Warren were getting 20-30. Part of Warrens support will go to Bernie should she eventually drop out.....but not all of it. Pete hurt Warren, and Warren hurt Pete. Pete does really well with college educated whites, as does Warren. Plus, when Amy drops out, I would venture a bulk of that support (like we saw in Iowa) is going to go to Pete.
Of course, a pretty freaking hilarious scenario is Sanders going into the convention with 30%, Bloomberg with 30% and Pete with 20%. At that point, the establishment wouldn't take it from Bernie, but I bet your bottom dollar they'd force him into a consensus Veep selection (such as Pete.) The meltdowns would be epic.
