Congratulations to Bernie Sanders on his First Good State Result!

Woohoo! He finally beat the 538 benchmarks in a state! And it'll almost certainly be two of them by night's end. His shocking 10-point victory in Oklahoma was six points ahead of his +4% benchmark, and he looks on pace to win Colorado by about six surplus points as well, with a 17-point win.

That is officially the end of the good news for Bernie Sanders tonight. Well, okay, a 73-point win in Vermont ain't bad, even if it falls short of the +83% benchmark. But his ~15-point win in Minnesota will fall short of a +21% benchmark. Meanwhile he's failing to win two states he should've won: Massachusetts, which he should've won by about 11% and will instead lose by 2% (which I think is brutal for his campaign), and Tennessee. Oh, Tennessee. 538 thinks it should've been a very competitive state. It had other ideas, joining its Southern neighbors in giving Hillary a landslide win at +37%. Taken all by itself that would imply a 39-point national lead for Hillary. Obviously that's ridiculous, but these benchmarks are just approximations and the real results would vary a little. Which is to say, the massive surplus in Tennessee for Clinton makes up for Bernie's good results in Colorado and Oklahoma.

And then we get to the rest of the South, where he was projected to lose big but actually lost bigger. In the current approximations of the final results, he's 16 points behind his benchmark in Georgia, 20 points behind in Texas, 24 points behind in Arkansas, and 28 points behind in Alabama.

Add it all together and Hillary's running about 15 points ahead of the benchmarks in the states that voted tonight. Add in the four early states and it's... still 15%. We're getting a fairly consistent view of the race, not so much state to state but when you add it all up. Sanders has run a great campaign, and his five state wins so far really are amazing given where he came from. But he's not there yet, and at this point, with the battle-lines hardening ever more, it really doesn't look like he can get there.

And even if he does, he'll need to make up for the big wins Hillary's already banked. Which looks basically impossible given the proportional delegate allocation.

Within a few weeks it's gonna start looking like Bernie shouldn't really be in the race anymore.