2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHillary is in trouble vs Trump. We NEED Bernie!
We NEED Bernie!
In shocking new developments, Donald Trump is closer to the White House than he may have ever been up until now. A brand new general election matchup poll has Trump with 41% of the vote to Hillary Clintons 39%. This is the first time he has ever been in the lead over Clinton since the race has thinned and the real candidates have come out. Last weeks version of this same poll had Clinton and Trump tied at 38%.
This development is so breaking that it is has not yet been factored into the polling averages at Huffington Post or Real Clear Politics. At each of those respective outlets, Clinton is still in the lead. According to the HuffPost average, Clinton is currently at about an 8% lead. This number is backed up by a 7.3% lead in the Real Clear Politics average. You can see the HuffPost average graph below.
But that was before today, and before what todays breaking released poll represents. The populist, also known as revolutionary (hint, hint) fervor, is swelling out of control. Among supporters of the madly persistent Democratic underdog, US Senator Bernie Sanders, at least 1 in 3 said they would not vote for Hillary Clinton should she become the nominee. These persons constitute the so-called Bernie or Bust movement.
And that makes sense, and up until now has had no visible effect on the potential general election outcome. Sanders has rocked the boat the most among fringe voters. He wins among Independents who lean left, and among the under 40 crowd. Clinton generally wins in the consistent Democratic party base, such as among the African American population of the Southern United States.
So its all in character for these 1 in 3 Sanders supporters to say they wouldnt vote for Clinton. They werent that interested in politics in the first place.
And people who are either expressly a part of this movement or involved by ideological association are the reason for the Trump lead in this latest poll. 15% of respondents said they would prefer some other candidate. Most of these people are Bernie or Busters. A much smaller number is probably made up of Never Trump individuals. 5% of poll respondents said they were undecided.
The margin of error for the poll was 5%. The margin of error is that number by which the actual results may differ from the reported results. In other words, this poll is a virtual tie. The real results could be plus or minus 5% in either direction.
http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/05/02/just-in-new-clinton-vs-trump-rcp-poli-shows-results-that-are-freaking-out-the-entire-world/
zappaman
(20,606 posts)firebrand80
(2,760 posts)and all of a sudden Republicans are winning again. Why am I not surprised?
pinebox
(5,761 posts)firebrand80
(2,760 posts)sufrommich
(22,871 posts)Tarc
(10,478 posts)THAT is now what I have in my head whenever some Sanders bro says he still has a chance to win the delegate race; it's like listening to Jan talk up her new boyfriend, George Glass.
Tarc
(10,478 posts)...they aren't.
Florida poll: Hillary Clinton easily beats Ted Cruz or Donald Trump
Virginia: Trump vs. Clinton
and so on, are the important numbers.
Amishman
(5,559 posts)I just can't take Rasmussen seriously.
The point that we do need Bernie is true though, but that is for many many reasons.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)and to be fair much of that reputation was when they said the Dems'd lose 2010...
their datapoints can be the highest boundary for him and lowest for her
but more than that we're starting to see headlines: at the very least it reinforces the "anti-status quo election" concept, and again that she's leading an old guard, completely incompetent with New Media, and banking only on Dems once again holding their nose and trudging to the polls yet again--and that he's a populist, even if thoroughly sinister
BootinUp
(47,211 posts)This article is a very thorough analysis of Bernie's claim to be the stronger candidate. Using historical data and more detailed polling.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/polls_say_bernie_is_more_electable_than_hillary_don_t_believe_them.html
Its true that Sanders does better than Clinton in hypothetical matchups against the Republicans. Currently, Sanders outperforms Clinton by more than seven percentage points against Trump, and by nearly nine points against Ted Cruz. But thats not because Sanders is the stronger nominee. Its because Republicans havent yet trashed him the way theyve trashed Clinton. Once they do, his advantage over her would disappear.
In recent days, several writersSahil Kapur in Bloomberg Politics, David Corn in Mother Jones, Greg Sargent in the Washington Post, Ed Kilgore in New York, and othershave sketched this argument. But is it true? Polls suggest it is. A concerted attack on Sanders weaknesses would hurt him badly in a general election. Heres how it would look.
The problem with current polls that test Sanders against Trump or Cruz is that they dont capture the effects of the fall campaign. As Harry Enten points out in FiveThirtyEight, early general-election polls in previous cycles were predictively worthless. Early in the 2000 election, for instance, George W. Bush led Al Gore by 12 percentage points. Bush, then the Texas governor, burst onto the national scene with relatively little negative media scrutiny, Enten observes. Between December 1999 and November 2000, as the scrutiny intensified, Bushs net favorability fell 27 percentage points. He ended up losing the popular vote.
snip
Would a GOP assault along these lines hurt Sanders? Absolutely. Start with his spending plans. Two months ago, an Associated Press-GfK poll asked Americans about Sanders proposal to replace the private health insurance system
with a single government-run and taxpayer-funded plan that would cover medical, dental, vision, and long-term care services. A 39 percent plurality favored the idea. Then the poll asked people whether theyd still support the plan if it meant your own taxes would increase. Suddenly, the plurality disappeared: Only 28 percent still favored the plan; 39 percent opposed it. When the poll mentioned that people would have to give up other coverage like employer coverage as part of the government-run system, again, 39 percent opposed it, while only 28 percent supported it.
themaguffin
(3,832 posts)Yawn.
griffi94
(3,733 posts)unless he can win the Democratic nomination.
That's becoming more and more of an impossibilty
as he's losing by 300 delegates and 3 million votes.
Onlooker
(5,636 posts)synergie
(1,901 posts)But you're all very amusing, keep up the comedy!
hack89
(39,171 posts)which so far has not happened in large enough numbers to put him in the GE.
synergie
(1,901 posts)his own freakout and that of his fellow Bernie supporters who are obsessed with these polls (that everyone who knows about polls says are not exactly reliable at this point), is reflective of the world, it's not.