Taken together, these four state polls show Biden trending in the wrong direction, but paradoxically they are actually good news for his overall chances of winning a majority of pledged delegates, which have ticked up from 1 in 9 (11 percent) on Thursday afternoon to 1 in 8 (13 percent) now. That’s because the four polls also show that states like South Carolina are still very much open for the taking and that Sanders, Biden’s main competition for the nomination, is not riding a huge wave of momentum. As a consequence, Sanders’s chances of winning a majority of pledged delegates have dipped slightly from 2 in 5 (39 percent) to 1 in 3 (38 percent). And there’s now a 2 in 5 (37 percent) chance that no one will achieve a pledged-delegate majority, which could lead to a contested convention.