Bernie Sanders’ Unusual Strategy to Win More Pledged Delegates

There was something else Littman and other volunteers stressed in their calls, though. “We were very big, in the scripting of our phone calls, [on making sure] that people knew that there was still an opportunity for Sen. Sanders to pick up delegates in the state — and to possibly win the state county-by-county. And that, I think, was a huge motivator for people,” Littman says. It made a difference “when they realized, ‘Wait a minute — we can change the result of what happened here in February?'”

The motivation stems partly from a sense among Bernie supporters that their candidate should have won Nevada — that he in fact would have won Nevada if there weren’t, as Littman puts it, so many “hijinks.” By that, Littman seems to refer to widespread complaints by Sanders supporters and surrogates of disorganization, and even alleged fraud, in the caucuses.

The volunteers’ efforts to turn out delegates and, crucially, alternates to take the place of delegates who failed show up, helped tighten the race. Only 3,825 of 9,000 delegates elected at the caucuses on February 20th showed up to the county convention. When alternates were factored in (915 elected, 604 unelected), the delegates broke 2,964 for Sanders, and 2,386 for Clinton. 

That doesn’t mean the caucus-night results were reversed: Clinton won 13 of 23 district-level delegates on February 20th, and she will keep those. The shift translates to a two-delegate difference in the remaining 12 pledged delegates, making the projected total Clinton 18, Sanders 17 — but, again, the number won’t be final until the delegates elected at the county convention go to the Nevada state convention on May 15th.

The Sanders campaign is hopeful it will pick up even more delegates there — Littman and his colleagues already have the BernieDialer fired up to ensure their people turn out again — but Nevada State Democratic chair Roberta Lange thinks it’s going to be tough for the campaign to move the needle any further in the state.

“Nothing’s impossible. [But] it would be very difficult,” Lange says. “The people that are coming to the state convention are people that have gone from the caucus to the county and now to the state — they’re your most dedicated supporters, and the likelihood of someone not showing up…. I mean, it’s possible, but I don’t think likely.”

Calling something “unlikely” doesn’t discourage Sanders supporters, though — theirs, after all, is a candidate who started the race with a 60-point deficit — which is why you should expect to see more efforts like the one that unfolded in Clark County at local and state conventions set to take place around the country in coming months. The efforts won’t always be as effective — a similar effort in Iowa’s Polk county failed to net more delegates for Sanders in March — but they will be underway.

And they won’t just be underway on the Democratic side. In Arizona, where Trump won all 58 delegates, Ted Cruz’s campaign has been working to install his own supporters in those delegate slots, with the assumption that, if there are multiple rounds of balloting, they will throw their support behind him, rather than Trump. Similar scenarios are playing out in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina and Indiana as well.

As the old saying goes: Rules are made to be craftily exploited for political gain.