Okay, time to bust a hole in the Bernie or Bust movement. No, their noisy Facebook threats notwithstanding, they will not throw the general election to Donald Trump. Because, once again, their inability to do math disproves their theory of the race. Here’s how…

The B or B theory is that enough BernieBots who either stay home or vote third party will deny Hillary Clinton the votes she’ll need to win. But that’s extremely unlikely. The numbers prove it.

Before looking at the specific numbers in this year’s race, let’s look at the history of presidential elections for some context.

In every general election, a certain portion of each party’s registered voters go rogue. In 2012, 5% of registered Democrats and 8% of self-described liberals voted for Romney (i.e., against Obama). In 2008, 7% of Democrats and 6% of liberals voted against Obama. McCain and Romney lost a similar number of Republican and conservative voters. This is true in every presidential election. It’s a natural spill-off that both parties suffer, and it generally cancels itself out.

So to expect 100% party fealty to Hillary Clinton in 2016 would be unrealistic. Of course some portion of her party will not vote for her. The question is, how many and is that number significant enough to throw the race?

In the case of the Bernie or Bust movement, we have a pretty good estimate of the high end of the number. It’s them.

So far, about 9 million people voted for Sanders this year. By the end of the primaries, that might be 11-13 million. That number represents the absolute top of the B or B movement, because anyone who is likely to be a Buster would have voted for Sanders in the primaries. Virtually no one so emotionally devoted to Sanders that they would be a Bernie or Bust voter in the general sat out their state’s primary. That’s just common sense. Oh sure, maybe there’s a handful of rabid Bernie fans who were physically unable to vote in their primary. But we’d be talking about a few hundred to a few thousand at best. Less than the number who write in their favorite porn star in any given election.

And of course, not all Sanders voters will be Busters; not even a majority of them. So let’s be generous and say Sanders ends up with 13 million primary votes. There have been estimates that as much as 25 percent of his supporters who claim they’ll forsake Hillary in the general. But that’s what they’re saying now. Recall that during the contentious Obama-Clinton race of 2008, 35% of Hillary voters vowed to never vote for Obama. Yet the ultimate number was closer to 16%. But John McCain was much closer to Hillary Clinton in tone and policies than Donald Trump is to Bernie Sanders, so it’s hard to envision as many Democrats crossing that Rubicon this time around. And current polls show that millennials are already warming up to the idea of voting for Hillary against Trump.

So what percentage of the B or B crowd are actually going to hold out and not vote for Clinton in the general? I’m talking about the ones who, after four solid months of watching Trump vs. Clinton head-to-head – with Trump saying more and more outrageous things that are anathema to liberals, and after reading the list of ten names of conservative judges from which he would draw his SCOTUS appointments, and after the debates in which he’ll be his usual insufferable self, and after Obama, Biden, Sanders, and Warren stump enthusiastically for Clinton all across the land – after all that, the ones who will still be able to bring themselves to tacitly support Trump by withholding a vote for Clinton. Maybe the same 16% percent of the 13 million? I doubt even that many.

But let’s say that 16%, or 2 million die-hard Sanders supporters ultimately stay true to their Bernie or Bust vow. That’s still not enough to throw a national election. How can I say that with any degree of certainty?

Because in 1992, in a three person race, Bill Clinton won by almost 6 million votes, with 20 million people voting for Ross Perot or another third party candidate. In ’96 Clinton won by 8 million votes, with nine million going third party. In 2004, George W. Bush won by 3 million votes, and in ’08 and ’12 Obama won by 10 million and 5 million respectively.

The only modern election with less than a 2 million vote margin was Bush v. Gore, which Gore lost with a popular vote net win of 543,000.

And while Green Party candidate Jill Stein may have won 456,000 votes in 2012, she is no Ralph Nader poised to pull almost three million votes this time around.

Sure, if 2016 turns out to be an historically razor thin election, it’s conceivable that 2 million Busters could tip the scales from Clinton to Trump. But again, that’s IF there are that many holdouts by the end and IF Trump can force a close election. Which looks extremely doubtful today.

A much more realistic probability is that more and more outspoken Bernie supporters like Tom Hayden, George Takei and Cenk Uyrgur will come around to realize that nothing is worth the chance of a Donald Trump presidency, and their legions of fellow Bernie supporters will follow suit.

Regardless of how many talk shows book Susan Sarandon to keep the B or B idea alive, I’d guess that the entire Bernie or Bust movement at the end will be less than 10% of the entire Sanders movement, some 1,300,000 votes, give or take. And those will be spread out across all fifty states, not concentrated in the ten swing states that will decide the election. (Indeed, I’d bet that most of the eventual Busters live in reliably blue coast states like California, Washington, Vermont, and New York that will give Clinton comfortable wins with or without their votes.)

And however many Democrats Clinton does end up bleeding, that will pale in comparison to the number of traditionally conservative voters who will reject voting for Trump.

So go on, Bernie or Busters, have your angry tantrums. Make your social media threats to sink the Clinton campaign and rant at her backers for not pleading for your forgiveness and mercy.

We will elect Hillary Clinton with you or without. We’d like you to be a part of her mandate, because mandates also count. But if you still decide to stay home or vote third party, enjoy your micro-revolution. Your protest vote will amount to nothing more than a lost grain of sand in the hourglass of history.

And Susan Sarandon will say something snide before moving on to her next lost cause.