Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders battle for momentum in New York’s Democratic primary

Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Mary Altaffer/AP, Seth Wenig/AP

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Bill Clinton starkly laid out the stakes for New York’s Democratic presidential primary at an event in the Long Island suburb of Elmont earlier this month.

“Look. This election in so many ways psychologically is coming down to New York,” he said.

Indeed, while Hillary Clinton has racked up enough delegates in earlier primaries to put her on a path to victory, the race in New York remains crucial to her campaign. The delegate-rich state provides the possibility of a decisive win, but also the potential for humiliation if born-and-bred New York City rival Bernie Sanders keeps the margin close in Clinton’s adopted home.

SLIDESHOW – Primary day in New York >>>

Polls heading into the Empire State’s election on Tuesday show Clinton poised for another victory, but with Sen. Sanders having won eight of the last nine contests, his campaign has been on a hot streak. Sanders’ team argues that this momentum will help him overtake Clinton in the delegate count as the candidates hopscotch the country, leading other delegates to switch sides come convention time.

In an email sent to supporters last Wednesday, Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, laid out the importance of the New York primary.

“Did you see that last week, Bernie’s campaign manager said they will ‘100 percent, absolutely’ push for a contested convention in July — even if Hillary holds on to her big lead in the popular vote? There’s only one way to stop that from happening: build an insurmountable delegate lead. To do that, we need a strong result in New York one week from today,” Mook wrote.

It’s easy to see why New York is a prize for the Democratic hopefuls. With 291 delegates on the line, it is second only to California in terms of impact on the race. However, for Clinton, the state has added importance because she represented it in the U.S. Senate from 2001 until 2009 and has made it her home since she left the White House. Losing her adopted home state to Sanders, who despite his Brooklyn roots has been largely absent from New York for decades, would be an especially embarrassing defeat.

The RealClearPolitics average of New York primary polls shows Clinton with an 11.7-point lead over Sanders. However, the polls have tightened substantially. Just last month, Clinton had an advantage of more than 30 points in New York.

The Clintons sign in at their voting place in Chappaqua, N.Y., Tuesday, April 19, 2016. (Photo: Richard Drew/AP)

A Clinton campaign official who requested anonymity told Yahoo News on Monday that the campaign always expected that the primary in New York would be competitive.

The official also noted that the current state of the race means Sanders will have to win more than 56 percent of the delegates in New York, and every other state on the calendar, to overtake Clinton. Because of this, Sanders would need to do more than just outperform the polls to come out ahead: He needs to beat Clinton by several points to make a difference.

Both Clinton and Sanders have strengths in the state. As he has elsewhere, Sanders has drawn massive crowds and generated substantial enthusiasm among younger voters. Along with the youth vote, Sanders’ team is hoping to win among working-class voters. Robert Becker, Sanders’ deputy national field director, told Yahoo News that the campaign’s decision to have its first major New York City event in the hardscrabble South Bronx neighborhood on March 31 was a deliberate signal about whom Sanders hopes to make part of his base.

“We started out … in the South Bronx. That should have been a signal of where we’re going to make a play, the sort of lower end on the wage scale, make poverty an issue here, obviously, working class, the youth,” Becker said when asked where Sanders expected to draw support.

Sanders faces strong obstacles as he tries to win with that coalition. Clinton has repeatedly outperformed him with black voters, and recent polls indicate he is not on track to buck this trend in New York.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who is backing Clinton, identified some of the candidates’ advantages in a conversation with Yahoo News at a campaign event in Harlem earlier this month.

“I think it’s very much of a home state for her,” Brewer said of Clinton. “She was beloved in New York. Sen. Sanders hasn’t been in Brooklyn for a long time. So I think Hillary will win big. That said, in addition to being the borough president, I also teach at Hunter College and … a lot of my students, they like Bernie.”

Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally in Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he was born. (Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)

A Quinnipiac University poll released on April 12 found that while Sanders has a 19-point lead among voters ages 18 to 44, he was trailing badly with African-American voters. Quinnipiac showed Clinton with a huge 37-point advantage among New York’s black voters, and the university’s pollsters largely attributed her overall lead to the African-American electorate.

“Black voters matter for Secretary Hillary Clinton in the New York Democratic primary,” Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Maurice Carroll said in a statement announcing the results.

The rules in New York also favor Clinton. Sanders has, thus far, fared better in states with open primaries where independents are allowed to vote in the Democratic race. However, New York election law allows only registered Democrats to participate in the primary. Voters who wanted to join the party had to do so by last October, and new voters who wanted to register as Democrats needed to do so by March 25. Because of these rules, Sanders needs to win among people who were already members of the Democratic Party and were registered before he kicked off his campaign in the state.

SLIDESHOW – The battle for New York >>>

In the spin room after the Democratic debate last Thursday, Sanders’ senior adviser Tad Devine acknowledged that the closed nature of New York’s primary is not ideal for his candidate. Devine also pointed out that Sanders’ strength with voters who are not party stalwarts may also be part of why he outperforms Clinton in some hypothetical general election polls. Those results are a major part of the Sanders campaign case that delegates should switch sides and back the Vermont senator.

“It is an obstacle. I mean, listen, we do better when independents can vote. … It’s just a much better system, and Bernie does much better with independents,” Devine said.

Clinton also has the backing of the vast majority of New York’s elected Democratic establishment. The state’s entire congressional delegation has endorsed her, along with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. At Sanders’ South Bronx rally, Assemblyman Luis Sepúlveda suggested he faced pressure to back Clinton.

“Several months ago, I was told, ‘You must endorse a particular candidate,” Sepúlveda recounted. “And I said, ‘Hold on, what’s the rush to judgment? Why don’t we find out about all the candidates? Let’s review the record.”

And many of the Democratic politicians backing Clinton have strong voter turnout organizations of their own, including Brewer, Rep. Charlie Rangel, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. Speaking with Yahoo News in the spin room after the debate, Jeffries said the organization in his Brooklyn district was working the streets for Clinton.

“We’re going to work as hard as we can over the next few days to turn the vote out,” Jeffries said.

Clinton campaigning at Junior’s restaurant in Brooklyn with Council Member Laurie Cumbo and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Saturday, April 9, 2016. (Photo: Seth Wenig/AP)

With Sanders’ momentum and the polls tightening, Clinton will need to capitalize on all of her strengths in the state. While she has begun building what some on her campaign have termed an “insurmountable” delegate lead, a narrow single-digit victory in her adopted home, with an army of allies by her side, will hardly dull Sanders’ momentum or stop his campaign from arguing that delegates should jump Clinton’s ship. In the spin room, Devine argued that Sanders doesn’t necessarily need a victory in New York to remain viable.

“Listen, I’m not going to say we’re going to win every contest between now and the middle of June. We’re going to win most of them. We’re going to win, by far, most of the delegates. We can make up the pledged delegate differential,” Devine said. “I believe when the voting’s over, he’ll be ahead in pledged delegates, he’ll be way ahead in the general election matchups, and I think the Democratic Party is going to … realize that Bernie Sanders, by far, is the strongest candidate for our party.”