Nate Silver: Forget 'Lanes.' The Democratic Primary Is A Whole Freaking Transit System.

[highplainsdem]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/forget-lanes-the-democratic-primary-is-a-whole-freaking-transit-system/

So if you run through this list, you certainly do see some major highways that connect Sanders and Warren. But there are also a lot of ways to get from Sanders to Biden. And there are some byways that link Sanders to several of the second-tier or minor candidates, most notably Gabbard, Buttigieg, Yang and O’Rourke. The one major candidate who doesn’t have a lot of obvious connections with Sanders is probably Harris. It’s sort of like trying to get from the West Village to the Upper East Side. You can certainly do it, and they aren’t that far apart as the crow flies, but it requires an extra transfer or two.

All of that might sound good in theory, but is there any data on who Sanders’s 2016 voters are supporting now? Actually, yes! Emerson College, in its national polls, has broken out results based on who Democrats said they supported four years ago. Since the sample sizes are a bit small, I combined the last two Emerson national polls, which were conducted in early and late July, respectively.



This data actually does a good job reflecting our “predictions” from above about how Sanders’s support from 2016 might map to the various candidates this year. (Granted, it’s easy to make “predictions” when you get to see the data before making them, as I did in this case.) Start with some of the lesser-known candidates. Gabbard and Yang might not have that many supporters, but the ones they do have are drawn disportionately from former Sanders voters. O’Rourke and Buttigieg also do better with former Sanders voters than with ex-Clinton ones.

Among the major candidates, there are quite a few Sanders 2016 –> Biden 2020 voters, although not nearly as many as there are Clinton 2016 –> Biden 2020 voters. Harris gets her support mostly from Clinton voters; relatively little comes from 2016 Sanders voters, consistent with our hypothesis.

Warren is, by contrast, drawing about equal shares of Clinton 2016 and Sanders 2016 voters. Maybe you’re surprised that Warren’s numbers aren’t more slanted to former Sanders supporters, but keep in mind that (i) there are plenty of connections between Clinton and Warren too, e.g. in their appeal to college-educated women; (ii) whereas Clinton’s voters need to look around for a new candidate, Sanders 2016 voters have the option of picking Sanders again. One way to look at it is that 44 percent of Sanders 2016 voters are voting for either Sanders or Warren this time around, while just 24 percent of Clinton 2016 voters are.

So there almost certainly is a robust left policy/ideology lane in the Democratic primary. It’s probably even one of the more well-traveled routes. It’s just far from the only road in town.

[crazytown]

1. Buyers remorse?

Only 31% who supported Bernie in 2016 are supporting him this time around,
and 19% are supporting Joe.

[highplainsdem]

2. My best guess is that 2016 Sanders supporters who switched to Warren consider her a better

messenger for similar ideas. And the Sanders supporters who switched to Biden are probably mostly concerned about electablity (which I'd guess is also why a number of polls have shown that Biden is the most popular second choice for voters whose current first choice is Sanders, and Sanders is the most popular second choice for voters whose current first choice is Biden; they have little in common besides usually beating Trump by the widest margins in the match-up polls).