Bernie Sanders’s surge doesn’t mean the Democratic race is wide open. Here’s why.

New polling data from YouGov/CBS, which shows Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) now ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton by 22 percentage points in New Hampshire and 10 points in Iowa, prompted a mini media frenzy earlier this week. These numbers were widely reported in news outlets, often under such overhyped headlines The New York Post’s “Bernie is Wiping the Floor with Hillary in Latest Polls,” Salon’s “Hillary is No Lock, Bernie is No Fluke: The Democratic Race is Wide Open,” and Breitbart’s “Poll: Bernie Sanders Surging, Hillary Clinton Cratering”

A simultaneous YouGov/CBS statewide survey of likely Democratic primary voters in South Carolina was nowhere to be found in those eye-catching headlines, though. The media paid much less attention to those numbers that showed Clinton ahead of Sanders by 23 percentage points in the Palmetto State. Sanders’s Cinderella surge, after all, is simply a better narrative than Goliath crushing David in South Carolina.

But the South Carolina poll results are probably more important for understanding how the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination will play out next year. The graph below shows Sanders even with Clinton among white voters nationally and ahead with this group in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. It is not too surprising, then, that he is now winning the almost all-white early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484


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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/17/bernie-sanderss-surge-doesnt-mean-the-democratic-race-is-wide-open-heres-why/