@benjamminbrown:
I'm not sure what you're confused about. Based on what Ubiq said, Bernie and Hillary's pledged delegate support are separated by a smaller margin than what Carter and Kennedy were separated by. It's not as close as the primary with Barack and Hillary, but it's still notably closer than any other democratic primary - unless I'm missing something?
Just doesn't seem like it was a landslide to me.
1. Carter and Kennedy was a huge loss. NOT a close race. But it was unusual because it was the sitting president against someone actually challenging him. (Carter had really low popularity at the time.) The sitting president is almost never challenged within their own party.
(Also, out of 17 million votes, Kenendy lost by 3 million votes. About 13%. Comprable to Sander's 4 million loss out of 27 million. A huge loss.)
2. Most primaries don't go the full distance.
3. Hence, using the actual presidental elections for data points, because we actually HAVE data on that for a full nationwide election.
Primaries are usually loaded with three or four reasonable challengers at the start (not 17) which throws off the numbers of the early states, and boil down to one candidate well before the the end. Usually its decided by Super Tuesday. The rare times it doesn't is usually when multiple people stay in the race dividing the vote which throws the percentages way off.
It's not that this is the closest, its just there's very few primaries with data for an entire run of all the states, since people usually just stop once they're several hundred delegates or a million votes behind because they know its impossible to catch up at that point. Usually Super Tuesday pretty much decides things.
Hillary/Obama is the only truly close one that's gone to the end there's been since these things started having reconds, and that's the exception, not the rule. (And she still dropped out before the end despite it being actually close.) ANy other race when someone was as far behind as Bernie was would have done the math and called it quits much, much sooner, it should not have gone on as long as it did, since it pretty much turned into a desperate farce by the end.
What part of "lost by four million votes" are you missing here? In elections losing by more than 2% is considered a mandate, losing by 14% is complete humiliating shut out among the worst losses in our history. ANd thats with the people that like him!