Bernie Sanders says his platform makes financial sense for most Americans. For example, his campaign says Sanders's single-payer health care system would save an average family of four almost $6,000 per year.

But in order to pay for his proposed programs, Sanders needs to increase taxes on virtually everyone in America. So if you're a voter, the question is simple:

Are you willing to pay more taxes for his proposals, like nationalized health care and free public college tuition?

How much more?

When we polled voters, we found most Sanders supporters aren't willing to pay more than an additional $1,000 in taxes for his biggest proposals. That's well short of how much more the average taxpayer would pay under his tax plan.

We asked voters how much more they are willing to pay for nationalized health care and free public college

We conducted a poll the week of April 4 in partnership with the nonpartisan technology and media company Morning Consult. In it, we asked voters how much more they would be willing to pay for two of Sanders's big propositions: a universal health care system covering all Americans and free tuition at public colleges and universities.

Most Americans say they are willing to pay something extra for these programs:

Nationalized health care: Around 80 percent of Sanders supporters are willing to pay more in federal taxes for universal health care coverage, compared with about 70 percent of Clinton supporters and about 40 percent of those supporting a Republican candidate.

Free public college tuition: A slightly lower percentage of people were willing to pay more for free public college tuition: 80 percent of Sanders supporters, 60 percent of Clinton supporters, and about 40 percent of those supporting a Republican candidate.
But when we look at how much more voters are willing to pay, we get a better idea of how voters view Sanders's plan.

Two in three Sanders supporters don't want to pay more than $1,000, or at all, for universal health care

About 66 percent of Sanders supporters said they wouldn't be willing to pay more than an additional $1,000 in taxes for universal health care. This includes the 8 percent of Sanders supporters who aren't willing to pay anything at all.

On Tuesday, Bernie Sanders announced the hiring of Simone Zimmerman, an outspoken critic of Israeli policy and its prime minister, as his campaign’s national Jewish outreach coordinator. The appointment was met with near instantaneous condemnation by the American Jewish establishment. By Thursday, the Sanders campaign announced it was suspending Zimmerman to investigate an exceptionally critical Facebook post from March 2015 attributed to her that characterized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as sanctioning mass murder. "F___k you, Bibi..." the post read.

Here’s more from the New York Times on the ideological divide that Zimmerman represents:

Ms. Zimmerman, who declined to comment, has been active in left-wing Jewish politics for years and came up in organizations such as J Street, but has also worked closely with Jewish synagogues in Los Angeles, and with young Jews on myriad trips to Israel. While the American Jewish establishment considers her and her allies radical, she and young Jewish activists argue that their disgust with the Netanyahu government’s policies is inching toward the mainstream.

This Friday, a group of Maricopa County voters will sue the state of Arizona over the disastrous primary election in March that left them waiting up to five hours in the desert heat to cast a ballot. They will be supported in the case by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee, the Arizona Democratic Party, the president of the Navajo Nation, and the campaign of Ann Kirkpatrick, who is challenging Sen. John McCain for his seat in Congress.

“Arizonans were denied their constitutional right to vote because those who run the system weren’t prepared, and it can never happen again,” Kirkpatrick said in an e-mailed statement. “Today’s action is about representing every Arizona voter who stood in line for far too long or was forced to go home without casting a ballot.”

The case demands the U.S. District Court of Phoenix review why the county cut the number of available polling places from 200 to 60, leaving only one voting center for every 21,000 voters, and ensure there are adequate polls open for this November’s general election, which will have even higher voter turnout. Even in the lower-turnout March primary, some polling places ran out of ballots.....

The new lawsuit from the Democratic Party aims to remedy the problem before November, when the key swing state could help determine the fate of both the White House and the Senate. Democrats are also suing in four other swing states — Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina — over allegations of voter suppression against students, people of color, and the poor.

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz argued Thursday that policies in these states are a deliberate attempt by Republican officials to maintain their power. “They want nothing less than to disenfranchise voting groups who are inconvenient to them on Election Day,” she said. “That’s exactly what Arizona’s officials did when they closed polling locations and rejected thousands of provisional ballots, and it’s exactly what they’ll continue to do if left unchecked.”

Austin, TX -- Last week, the Texas Tribune reported that “Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry may have stumped for Ted Cruz for president, but there's no record he voted in this year's Republican primary in Texas. A spokesman for Perry suggested his ballot may have been lost in the mail.” [Texas Tribune, March 29, 2016]

The Tribune goes on to state,“Fayette County Elections Administrator Dina Bell confirmed by email on Tuesday that Perry requested a mail-in ballot for the March 1 Republican primary and one was given to him on Feb. 1.Bell recalled that Perry showed up in person to get it…”

Here’s where it gets interesting: picking up a mail-in ballot in person is against the law. Isn’t this the kind of potential voter fraud Gov. Perry and Republicans rail against? After all, you wouldn’t want empty ballots just floating around.

Texas Election Code States: “(a)The balloting materials for voting by mail shall be provided to the voter by mail. A ballot provided by any other method may not be counted….(b) Subject to Subsection (c), the balloting materials shall be addressed to the applicable address specified in the voter’s application. The election officer providing the ballot may not knowingly mail the materials to an address other than that prescribed by this section.” [TEC § 86.003]

Texas Democratic Party Vote-by-Mail Program Director & former State Representative Glen Maxey issued the following statement calling for an investigation from the Secretary of State, Attorney General, and Fayette County and District Attorney:

“Anything less than a full and thorough investigation on this issue is confirmation that corruption has completely infected Texas government under one-party Republican rule.

Yesterday afternoon, meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced its fundraising tally over the same period, and though Sanders hasn’t matched his rival in votes or wins, we were reminded once more that he’s easily defeating her when it comes to dollars in the bank. But the Clinton campaign’s press release added something Sanders’ did not:

Hillary Clinton raised about $29.5 million for her primary campaign during March. That amount brings the first quarter total to nearly $75 million raised for the primary, beating the campaign’s goal of $50 million by about 50 percent. [Hillary For America] begins April with nearly $29 million on hand.

Clinton raised an additional $6.1 million for the DNC and state parties during the month of March, bringing the total for the quarter to about $15 million [emphasis added].

The first part matters, of course, to the extent that Sanders’ fundraising juggernaut is eclipsing Clinton’s operation, but it’s the second part that stands out. How much money did Sanders raise for the DNC and state parties in March? Actually, zero. For the quarter, the total was also zero.

And while the typical voter probably doesn’t know or care about candidates’ work on behalf of down-ballot allies, this speaks to a key difference between Sanders and Clinton: the former is positioning himself as the leader of a revolution; the latter is positioning herself as the leader of the Democratic Party. For Sanders, it means raising amazing amounts of money to advance his ambitions; for Clinton, it means also raising money to help other Democratic candidates.

As Rachel noted on the show last night, the former Secretary of State has begun emphasizing this angle while speaking to voters on the campaign trail. Here, for example, is Clinton addressing a Wisconsin audience over the weekend:

“I’m also a Democrat and have been a proud Democrat all my adult life. I think that’s kind of important if we’re selecting somebody to be the Democratic nominee of the Democratic Party.

“But what it also means is that I know how important to elect state legislatures, to elect Democratic governors, to elect a Democratic Senate and House of Representatives.”

The message wasn’t subtle: Clinton is a Democrat and Sanders isn’t; Clinton is working to help Democrats up and down the ballot and Sanders isn’t.

One of the most intriguing storylines of the 2016 election has turned out to be one of the most underreported. Every candidate for President hopes to not only enter the White House, but do so with a congressional majority in hand. Although Hillary Clinton is the clear frontrunner and is likely to win the election, republican gerrymandering means that her odds of having a democratic House and Senate are questionable. But she’s spent the past six months trying to rectify that by essentially funding the congressional races of 2016 democratic candidates herself.

They’re called Victory Funds, and the short of it is that while Hillary has been out on the campaign trail raising funds for her own Presidential campaign, she’s been making it easy for her donors to simultaneously donate to the various state level democratic parties. The money will be divvied up among the democrats running for election and reelection in the Senate and House.

After the democrats took some lumps in the past few congressional races and lost both houses of congress to the republicans, Clinton has put together this co-fundraising strategy as a way of entering office with as many democratic allies on the hill as possible. Even as she pulls further ahead in the primary race and begins to pivot to the general election, she’s been breathing life into her party’s congressional chances along the way.

There actually is no historic correlation between primary turnout and general election turnout. None. The highest turnout in a Democratic primary—before the outlier of 2008—was in 1988. Gov. Michael Dukakis got killed in November. Democratic primary turnout was actually lower in 1992—two million fewer Democrats voted in the primaries that year. The drop in turnout didn’t stop Bill Clinton from winning the general election convincingly.

Turnout data also shows Americans don't vote in primaries because they're excited about November. They vote in primaries when the outcome of the party nomination is in doubt. The outcome of this primary hasn't been in doubt for most Democratic primary voters despite a hard-fought race. That’s a statement that may strike people who read campaign news every day as odd, especially given the fundraising success of the Sanders campaign. Democrats have seen Hillary Clinton as our party’s likely 2016 nominee for years and her strength is beginning to catch up to this underlying reality. Turnout is lower because there has been less suspense about the outcome.

Higher Republican primary turnout is also no reason to think the GOP is growing their base. In zero states has the number of primary votes even come close to the number of Republican general election votes. Primary electorates and general electorates are just very different animals.

Look at the data from New Hampshire and Virginia. In New Hampshire, the state with the highest turnout percentage so far, there were 284,120 votes in the GOP primary, but Mitt Romney received 329,918 votes in 2012. In Virginia, just over a million votes were cast in their Super Tuesday primary, but Mitt Romney won more than 1.8 million votes in the state in 2012. Again: there is no data correlation.

Fear—far more than enthusiasm—is a huge motivating factor in many Republican voters’ minds. In a Clarity Campaign Labs satisfaction index created out of publicly available exit polls, barely 50 percent of GOP voters said they would be satisfied with the three leading candidates getting the nomination - 53 percent Rubio, 51 percent Cruz, 48 percent Trump.

Democrats on the other hand would strongly back the nominee: 78 percent would be satisfied with Secretary Hillary Clinton and 63 percent would back Sen. Bernie Sanders no matter their first choice. Smart policy and a will to win the White House drives Democrats to the polls. Gains in Republican primary turnout come from a party running scared.