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Another view of the "Bernie Sanders voters cost Clinton the election?" meme
The Washington Post has a feature article: Did enough Bernie Sanders supporters vote for Trump to cost Clinton the election?. I just ask that people read and note the numbers in the following paragraphs:
How many Sanders voters voted for Donald Trump?
Two surveys estimate that 12 percent of Sanders voters voted for Trump. A third survey suggests it was 6 percent.
First, the political scientist Brian Schaffner analyzed the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which was conducted by YouGov and interviewed 64,600 Americans in October-November 2016. In that survey, Schaffner found that 12 percent of people who voted in the primary and reported voting for Sanders also voted in November and reported voting for Trump.
Two surveys estimate that 12 percent of Sanders voters voted for Trump. A third survey suggests it was 6 percent.
First, the political scientist Brian Schaffner analyzed the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which was conducted by YouGov and interviewed 64,600 Americans in October-November 2016. In that survey, Schaffner found that 12 percent of people who voted in the primary and reported voting for Sanders also voted in November and reported voting for Trump.
Schaffner examined only voters whose turnout in the primary and general election could be validated using voter file data. This excludes people who said they voted but actually did not — although it also excludes people who voted in caucuses or party-run primaries, for which validated turnout data are not as readily available.
There's a great deal of data in paragraphs between the above and those further down in the article; but, I think these are significant:
What kinds of Sanders voters supported Trump?
Perhaps the most important feature of Sanders-Trump voters is this: They weren’t really Democrats to begin with.
Of course, we know that many Sanders voters did not readily identify with the Democratic Party as of 2016, and Schaffner found that Sanders-Trump voters were even less likely to identify as Democrats. Sanders-Trump voters didn’t much approve of Obama either.
Perhaps the most important feature of Sanders-Trump voters is this: They weren’t really Democrats to begin with.
Of course, we know that many Sanders voters did not readily identify with the Democratic Party as of 2016, and Schaffner found that Sanders-Trump voters were even less likely to identify as Democrats. Sanders-Trump voters didn’t much approve of Obama either.
In fact, this was true well before 2016. In the VOTER Survey, we know how Sanders-Trump voters voted in 2012, based on an earlier interview in November 2012. Only 35 percent of them reported voting for Obama, compared with 95 percent of Sanders-Clinton voters. In other words, Sanders-Trump voters were predisposed to support Republicans in presidential general elections well before Trump’s candidacy.
Summing up:
In short, it may be hard to know exactly how many Sanders-Trump voters there were, or whether they really cost Clinton the election. But it doesn’t appear that many of them were predisposed to support Clinton in the first place.
15 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Good try, though. 
Stop refighting the Primaries and bashing DEms.
