How Huge Voter Turnout Eluded Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday

[RandySF]

In no state did people younger than 30 account for more than 20 percent of the electorate, based on exit polls, and in most states they accounted for 15 percent or less.

Because so few young people voted, it did not matter that Mr. Sanders won them by huge margins, because Mr. Biden won the much more plentiful older voters.

In addition, while Mr. Sanders has succeeded in galvanizing Latino voters — he won them by about 27 percentage points over Mr. Biden in California — he has struggled to build support among black voters.

In Alabama, where black voters were half of the electorate, Mr. Sanders lost them by more than 60 points. He lost them by more than 50 points in Virginia, and by more than 40 points in Texas and North Carolina. In several states, he came in third among black voters, behind not only Mr. Biden but also Michael R. Bloomberg.

In Minnesota, Mr. Sanders had a large gender gap. He had the support of 37 percent of men, according to exit polls, very close to Mr. Biden’s 39 percent. But he only won 25 percent of women, compared with 41 percent for Mr. Biden. Mr. Sanders did do unusually well among black voters, who were a point of struggle for him in other states: He won 43 percent of them. But he only won 27 percent of white voters, who account for most of the Minnesota electorate.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/us/politics/bernie-sanders-young-voter-turnout.html

[msongs]

1. using data, rachel asked about the young vote and bernie tried to dodge nt

[NurseJackie]

12. That was a painfully amusing exchange. A complete disconnect.

[Cha]

2. KR!

[herding cats]

3. Young people aren't a reliable voting block.

It's statistically proven time and time again. They're enthusiastic, they're passionate and their hearts are often in the right place. They just tend to do things which are more social, group type events (rallies, caucuses and now social media) rather than solo events such as voting.

We need to find a way to get them to the polls in larger numbers, but so far we've all been stumped on how to manage that feat. My theory is it needs to start at home before they're of voting age.

[Squinch]

6. They DID come out to vote in 2018, but they voted for moderates. Bernie's youth revolution is

a figment of his imagination.

[Gothmog]

4. Bernie Sanders Hit His Ceiling

sanders has a ceiling of support which means that he will trouble winning the nomination https://politicalwire.com/2020/03/04/bernie-sanders-hit-his-ceiling/

“The surprisingly decisive result left Sanders, a candidate who prides himself on his pile-driver-like consistency, facing a new challenge: finding a second act that can appeal to voters beyond the fervid base he has established. The evening’s clearest message was that while the senator from Vermont has inspired a passionate depth of support, the breadth of his coalition remains too limited to win the nomination.”

“Sanders reached 33% or more of the vote in just five of the 14 states that voted (including his home state of Vermont) and did not exceed 36%, his share in Colorado. Biden had a higher ceiling: He won at least 39% in seven states and roughly a third of the vote in three others.”

Said pollster Stan Greenberg: “Sanders has made no effort to reach out beyond his voters, his movement, his revolution. It just has not grown. It is an utterly stable vote that is grounded in the very liberal portion of the Democratic Party, but he’s so disdainful of any outreach beyond that base. He seems content to just keep hitting that drum.”

[honest.abe]

5. Super Tuesday yet agains proves Sanders is incapable of connecting with black voters.

It appears he has made no progress with that voting block since 2016. The numbers then and now are about the same. Without the black vote he cannot be the Democratic nominee.

[pansypoo53219]

7. the SOUTH does not matter in the Nov election usually does it. so WHY do they get to go before th???

ca matters. the midwest matters.

[GulfCoast66]

13. Virginia, North Carolina and Florida beg to differ.

[Gothmog]

8. What happened to sanders' magical voter revolution?

[NurseJackie]

9. I guess the concert rallies tuckered-them-out.

It's such a bizarre thing. What's the deal with having SO MANY attendees at a BS rally... but so few voters coming out to vote?

Is the attendance at the rally a fluke? Do a large percentage of those in attendance have NO intention of voting for him anyway... and so they just attend "for the show" and the spectacle of it all?

Or... could the attendees actually be interested in hearing what BS has to say? But then, after hearing his same old stump speech, do they decide that he's NOT the one they want after all?

[Gothmog]

10. Young voters are turning out in lower numbers than Bernie Sanders expected

Link to tweet

But the exit polling from this year's contests so far shows a more challenging picture for Sanders. Youth turnout compared to 2016 is either flat or down in a majority of states that have voted, according to these polls, meaning young voters both form a smaller share of the overall Democratic primary vote and turned out in smaller net numbers. Sanders could end up seeing better data for him from the final results in Colorado and California, however.

The lack of enthusiasm among younger voters was especially pronounced with turnout up 33 percent from 2016 among every group across Super Tuesday states.

“For example, in North Carolina, overall turnout was up 17 percent — youth turnout was down 9 percent,” John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Institute of politics told Power Up. “There's not evidence to suggest that Sanders has expanded the electorate among young people in important ways.” ....

Della Volpe said data doesn't necessarily support the idea that all young voters want the kind of sweeping policy changes candidates like Sanders are calling for.

Problematic for Sanders?: “When looking at young Democratic primary voters, bold structural change is preferred, but not by as much as you might think,” Della Volpe told us at the time after an IOP study released in November

[Gothmog]

11. Bernie's grievance politics consolidated the left to a 30% losing minority

sanders' cap is near 30% https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/5/1924709/-Bernie-s-grievance-politics-consolidated-the-left-to-a-30-losing-minority

Interesting thought, speaking of Elizabeth Warren and her inability to gain traction with the Bernie Sanders left:

Link to tweet

’ve wracked my brain wondering why so many on the progressive left, in this day and age of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, would align with an old white guy when there were clear alternatives (unlike in 2016), and this makes as much sense as anything. One commenter on my last piece, on why Bernie Sanders fizzled upon contact with actual voters, wrote that, “for Bernie to do some of the work kos is asking, he would have to change his message in a way a dependably left politician will never do.”
Interesting—what made Sanders a “dependably left politician,” but Warren not? Clearly, it wasn’t actual policy or ideology. Krugman’s “grievance” is as good as an explanation as any.

Remember, the Sanders campaign decided early on that his path to the nomination consisted of keeping his core 30% base intact, and nothing more: As The Atlantic noted, “And then, Sanders aides believe, he’ll easily win enough delegates to put him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen.”
That was important, as we’ve discussed, because it set the tone for the entirety of their campaign—from othering the supporters of other candidates as “neoliberal corporatist shills” (and worse) to sticking with a message that had failed Sanders already in 2016, when only two candidates had been in the race.
And it’s shocking how close to 30% his results have been:

Sanders share of the vote
Iowa 26.5%
New Hampshire 25.6%
Nevada 40.5%
South Carolina 19.8%
Alabama 16.5%
Arkansas 22.4%
California 33.8%
Colorado 36.1%
Maine 32.9%
Massachusetts 26.7%
Minnesota 29.9%
North Carolina 24.1%
Oklahoma 25.4%
Tennessee 25%
Texas 30%
Utah 34.6%
Vermont 50.8%
Virginia 23.1%
Take a guess what his overall percentage is so far.
28.9%

[Gothmog]

14. Where is sanders' magical voter revolution?

[Blue_Tires]

15. I'm sure he'll find some way to blame the DNC for this

how we somehow conspired to keep the young voters home, or something...

[Gothmog]

16. The Gauzy Mythi of the Sanders campaign

I never considered sanders to be a serious candidate. sanders has zero major legislative accomplishments in large part because none of his fellow Democrats in Congress support his agenda. I do not understand the concept of a voter revolution . Without such a magical voter revolution, none of sanders' agenda could be adopted and I am not comfortable in relying on a magical voter revolution

I am not only one to doubt the seriousness of sanders as a candidate https://newrepublic.com/article/156883/gauzy-myth-sanders-campaign

After Tuesday night, the undeniable truth is that the entire Sanders campaign was predicated on a gauzy myth. If there were ever hidden armies of would-be Democratic voters yearning for a visionary presidential nominee uncontaminated by the compromises of life, then these Bernie Brigades still remain well camouflaged.

Sure, as Sanders stressed in his Wednesday statement, some of his policies are popular with primary voters. In Michigan, exit polls showed that replacing private health insurance with a government program had the support of nearly 60 percent of the people who went to the polls on Tuesday. But since the February 29 South Carolina primary, most Democratic primary voters have been unwilling to buy the entire Sanders package: politically unattainable goals, such as canceling $1.6 trillion in college debt, combined with attacks on corporate interests and the “billionaire class.”

After Sanders’s two presidential runs, voters possess a pretty clear-eyed sense of who he is. He is a gadfly, a goad, and a left-wing Pied Piper. These can be valuable traits in politics since the moderate, accommodationist wing of the Democratic Party sometimes needs outside pressure to force it to focus on causes larger than the next election. But Sanders was never cut out to be a traditional president forging alliances, brokering compromises, and dealing with the messiness of governing in a bitterly divided democracy. That simply isn’t Bernie’s skill set. And his lifelong rigidity would have become an even larger governing problem if he ever succeeded Trump as president.

What Democratic voters have created by rallying around Biden is the American equivalent of the Popular Front, which, in the 1930s, was a broad, multiparty alliance against fascism in France and other democratic countries. The exit polls from Michigan echo a sentiment found in almost all primaries—voters, by a 58-to-37 percent margin, want a candidate who can defeat Trump more than someone who agrees with them on all issues.....

Sanders will undoubtedly fight on in the hopes that he can shape the Democratic platform. The problem with that strategy is that, even if Biden were to commit to supporting, say, Medicare for All, as a price for party harmony in Milwaukee, it would be a meaningless pledge. Currently, fewer than one-third of the Democrats in the Senate support eliminating private insurance. And if Chuck Schumer succeeds in getting the chamber back in Democratic hands, the new additions to their ranks are likely to be moderates like John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Steve Bullock of Montana, none of whom support Medicare for All.

There was never going to be a magical voter revolution and there was never any substance to sanders' campaign or any chance that sanders' agenda would be adopted in the real world

[Demsrule86]

17. Very interesting...K&R