"In Nearly Every Blue, Purple, and Light-Red State, Bernie Sanders Polls Better Against Trump..."

[Attorney in Texas]

link to In Nearly Every Blue, Purple, and Light-Red State, Bernie Sanders Polls Better Against Trump Than Hillary Clinton; excerpt:

While the national media's continued use of "super-delegates" in its delegate tallies, against the advice and demand of the Democratic National Committee, may give the impression that Hillary Clinton has built an insurmountable lead over Bernie Sanders, two recent developments have put a significant dent in that storyline: first, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has joined the Democratic National Committee's call to stop tallying super-delegates; second, Sanders supporters have begun disseminating polling data showing that Sanders runs much better against likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, than does Clinton.

According to the most recent state-by-state polling collected by RealClearPolitics, a top polling aggregator, these are the blue, purple, and light-red states in which Bernie Sanders runs better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton:

Georgia
Iowa
Minnesota
North Carolina
New Hampshire
Ohio
Virginia
Wisconsin

[AzDar]

1. K & R

[aaaaaa5a]

2. He polls better because the public at large doesn't know who he is.

There is a natural disdain for politicians. Candidate X will always beat a known quantity. Once candidate X is filled in with a known quantity the numbers change. Often drastically. Why is this political fact so difficult for Sanders supporters to understand?

[JudyM]

4. Link to evidence, please, if you have it. Or is this a matter of opinion?

[senz]

5. The public at large DOES know who he is.

That's why he is winning entire states. That's why people turn out for him in droves. The only ones who know less about who he is are those whose sole news source is the MSM, specifically, TV.

[0rganism]

6. i suspect, by now, "the public at large" thinks they know at least something about who he is

really, you'd have to be intentionally not paying attention to not know a little by now.

i've seen rightwingers openly calling him a communist, so they clearly have at least some ideas about him; they're probably still skittish about opening up on him for being a Jew.

initially, the Sanders supporters were claiming his super-low numbers (back in the 3-5% days) were due to people not knowing about him or his positions, and they predicted his numbers would rise when people figured it out. well, they've risen. significantly.

he's not polling 3-5% anymore. i haven't seen any recent name recognition polling (there was plenty of it, back about 3-4 months), and my takeaway from that is it's a settled issue -- people basically know who he is and what he's doing. he's not "Candidate X" anymore.

you'd be correct to say Hillary is a known quantity to voters -- and based on the polls i've seen of "the public at large", they don't like her much and they don't trust her. going by the numbers i've seen, there is a simpler explanation for the preliminary ge poll numbers being as they are: general election voters would rather vote for Sanders than Clinton.

the "the public doesn't know about Bernie yet" line becomes less plausible every day.

[Lorien]

8. This assertion is completely ridiculous

Bernie greatly benefits when people "know who he is"; WHY DO YOU THINK THAT HE'S FACING A MEDIA BLACKOUT? Hillary, on the other hand, wants as little exposure of "who she is" as possible. She's trying to get elected on gender and name recognition alone, because her record is pretty horrific.

[Jim Lane]

11. Your argument is no longer valid. Sanders is much better known than he was a year ago.

One poll result I've occasionally looked at, even though I sometimes have to calculate for myself, is recognition, determined by using a favorability poll and finding the sum rather than the difference of the favorable-unfavorable responses. Clinton, unsurprisingly, started off very high, with more than 90% of the respondents expressing an opinion about her. Sanders started off much lower but has largely closed the gap.

Here's a Gallup report from July 2015 that notes the early trend. In Gallup's March 2015 polling, only 24% of the respondents gave Sanders any rating at all. By July, that was up to 44%. In a Quinnipiac poll from last month, the recognition gap between the two candidates was almost gone. Respondents expressing an opinion about Clinton were 95% (37-58, for a net unfavorable of 21 points), and those about Sanders were 87% (51-36, for a net favorable of 15 points).

Unlike the situation a year ago, therefore, there isn't all that much room for change as candidates become better known. If ALL the people (5% of the total) still undecided about Clinton end up viewing her favorably, and ALL the people (13% of the total) still undecided about Sanders end up viewing him unfavorably, she's still underwater (by 16 points) and he's still net favorable (albeit by only 2 points).

And, of course, there's essentially zero chance that all those undecideds will actually break that way. With both candidates now so well known, their net favorable-unfavorable ratings aren't subject to major change from the factor of undecideds forming an opinion. Major changes will come only if voters who now know about them are induced to change their minds.

This development -- the increasing public knowledge of Sanders -- shows up in the matchup polls. For example, here are the matchup results from the Quinnipiac poll:

Quinnipiac University Poll/February 18, 2016 – page 2
Presidential matchups among American voters show:
 Sanders over Trump 48 – 42 percent;
 Sanders tops Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas 49 – 39 percent;
 Sanders leads Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida 47 – 41 percent;
 Sanders beats Bush 49 – 39 percent;
 Sanders edges Kasich 45 – 41 percent.
 Clinton with 44 percent to Trump’s 43 percent;
 Cruz with 46 percent to Clinton’s 43 percent;
 Rubio topping Clinton 48 – 41 percent;
 Bush at 44 percent to Clinton’s 43 percent;
 Kasich beating Clinton 47 – 39 percent.

Note that, for each Republican opponent, there's very little difference between Clinton and Sanders in the total number of respondents who express an opinion (i.e., the sum of the Democratic and Republican candidates' scores). I'm sure that, if you were to match up Brian Schweitzer with John Kasich, you'd find a much lower total of responses, because only people in Montana and DU politics junkies have even thought about Schweitzer as a presidential candidate. That would once have been true of Sanders but he is no longer in that category.

By the way, all the polls I've cited her are of adult Americans nationwide, not limited to Democrats or to any particular state.

[senz]

3. Come on. National polls always show Bernie doing better than Hillary against Trump.

[Lorien]

9. Yep. And while Hillary fans scream that we must unite to defeat Trump

(encouraged to run by his close friends the Clintons), they themselves are completely unwilling to unite to help the only candidate who can without a doubt beat him, and the rest of the GOP field. One would almost think that they would rather have a right winger in office than anyone left of center...

[Codeine]

7. So win a big delegate haul.

Get your man nominated and we'll vote for him. All the polls about his GE performance in the world are meaningless if he ain't the nominee. Win. Get out your vote.

[Lorien]

10. End the media blackout and election shenanigans

can't manage on a level playing field, can you? This is why Hillary can't win in the GE.