title:  Nate Silver Forecasts An Easy Win For Hillary Clinton In New York
text: New York is critical for both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but only one of them seems poised for a big win. The other is predicted to suffer a serious setback in one of the few remaining states with a large delegate count.As of Sunday, the polling shows Donald Trump crushing Ted Cruz and John Kasich with 52 percent of the vote while Hillary Clinton Leads Bernie Sanders with 57.2 percent of the vote. If these numbers hold up, that will give Clinton an additional 39 delegates over Sanders, expanding her lead from 206 to 245.It s important to make note of this in advance because the last several races that Clinton has won have been met with howls of  election fraud.  Aside from the sour grapes aspect, this constant drumbeat of alleged  cheating  is a shallow attempt to delegitimize Clinton as a candidate. Republicans have been doing it to President Obama for years and it should be condemned as the shameful tactic it is.Regardless, there are a few obvious reasons that Hillary is poised for an easy win. First, New York is a primary state, not a caucus state. While Hillary has under-preformed in caucuses, on average, she s seriously over-preformed in primaries. In essence, the more people that vote, the better Hillary does. A hard fact to swallow but a fact nonetheless.Second, New York is a closed primary, meaning only registered Democrats can vote. This has been a source of outrage among Independents who have demanded the  right  to vote for the Democratic nominee. This, of course, begs the question of why people who chose not to join the party should have the  right  to dictate who that party selects as the nominee. If you think the answer is  democracy,  allow me to point out that caucuses exclude people that cannot spend 2-3 hours on a weeknight voting for a candidate. In terms of participation, millions vote in primaries while only thousands vote in caucuses.Glass houses and all that.Third, and most importantly, New York is a demographically diverse state that closely resembles the racial makeup of the Democratic Party as a whole. In states where Democratic voters are overwhelmingly white, Sanders has a strong  advantage. Everywhere else? Not so much. Here s an interesting data set for you to digest: In November, it s expected that about 54 percent of Democratic voters will be white, 24 percent will be black, 11 percent will be Latino and 7 percent will be Asian/everything else.In the Southern states where the majority of Democratic voters are black, Clinton crushed Sanders. Conversely, in states where the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters are white, Sanders crushed Clinton. Neither of these group of states is particularly representative of the Democratic Party so neither is a good predictor for more evenly mixed states.But, when you look at the 20 states most closely aligned with the demographic makeup of the party, you find an abundance of good news for Clinton: Of the 12 states that have voted, Hillary lost one by a hair, won two by a tiny margin, tied in another and utterly dominated the rest   5 of them by 29 points or more.Take a look:Even better for Clinton, all of the remaining states with large delegate counts are part of those 20. New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and California represent 1,132 of the reaming 1,647 delegates. In order to close the significantly large delegate gap, Bernie can t just win those states, he has to win them big. But they re all closed primaries except for California. And even then, of the 18 open primaries/caucuses held so far, Hillary s won 11 of them so California dreaming is not much comfort to the Sanders campaign.And just to top it all off, Hillary is dominating the polls in all five states, anyway.It s possible that one or two of those states will have a Michigan style upset but considering how historically wrong the polling was going into that election, it seems more than a little more unlikely that we ll be seeing more of that. Does this mean Clinton voters should be complacent? Hellllll no. The more she wins by, the stronger her position and the longer her coattails will be going into the general election. Eyes on the prize.Everything else is just noise.Featured image via Eric Thayer/Getty Images