Bloomberg campaign warns of ‘insurmountable’ Sanders lead if moderates split votes

Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg’s campaign warned in a memo released Wednesday that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will be “all but impossible to defeat” after Super Tuesday if he wins with their projected delegate lead. 

The campaign’s state of the race memo said that if moderate candidates remain in the race despite not having a path to victory, they will end up taking votes away from the former New York City mayor. 

“If Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar remain in the race despite having no path to appreciably collecting delegates on Super Tuesday (and beyond), they will propel Sanders to a seemingly insurmountable delegate lead by siphoning votes away from [Bloomberg],” the memo read. 

The campaign’s current Super Tuesday projection shows Sanders moving past Super Tuesday with a 404 delegate lead, which they said would make it “all but impossible” to stop the progressive senator from garnering a plurality of the pledged delegates. 

The memo comes after Bloomberg’s states director, Dan Kanninen, told reporters on Tuesday that Sanders, Bloomberg and Trump were the most viable general election candidates. 

Kanninen added in the call that Sanders is “in a position to win the nomination of the Democrats based on the polling.” However, he said that Bloomberg is in a position to close the gap with Sanders in March. 

Bloomberg, who is not competing in the first four contested states, has poured his resources into campaigning in Super Tuesday states and beyond. 

The former New York City mayor is neck and neck with the progressive senator in the Super Tuesday state of Virginia, according to a Monmouth University survey released Tuesday. Bloomberg has visited the state six times since announcing his presidential bid and has opened seven offices there. 

Bloomberg has also made inroads in national polling, coming in second to Sanders in an NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll that was also released Tuesday. Sanders led the poll with 31 percent support, while Bloomberg trailed at 19 percent.