The Indiana result represents a continuation of the pattern.

[Garrett78]

Indiana, like a majority of the remaining states, matches the profile of a Sanders state. Neither glee nor panic seem like appropriate responses to something that merely follows suit.

That said, I suppose there is something to the idea that more delegates for Sanders means more influence on the Democratic Party platform. But platforms and governance are 2 different things, and systemic change will require a sustained, mass movement long after this nomination process is complete. It's safe to say a Clinton Administration will govern very much like the Obama Administration has. If you aren't satisfied with that, influencing the party platform (words on a page) won't get the results you seek.

[morningfog]

1. I don't care if the hill folks deny it, but losses this late

and the margins of some point to an inherent weakness in their candidate that they need to honestly explore and figure out before the general.

[pnwmom]

2. No, they don't. Indiana fits his pattern of a state with few African American voters and an

open primary.

Nate Silver wrote about this.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511892222

And if Bernie supporters think that his continuing presence in the race makes Hillary weaker, then they should encourage him to acknowledge reality and drop out. Because there's no way he will make up the millions of votes or 300 delegates between them.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

5. Plus

Open Primary where Indies and Republicans can vote in the Democratic Primary (and vice-versa). His win in Indiana, though good for him in terms of a temporary morale booster, changes nothing in the long run nor does it mean that she is a weak candidate. Didn't Obama lose some primaries toward the end too and if so, did anybody declare that he might be a weak candidate?

[RichVRichV]

24. One big difference.

Even in states that Obama lost in the 2008 primaries, such as New York and California, he was still winning the Independent votes over Hillary in those primaries by large margins. That pointed to his strength come general election time.

Hillary is getting stomped into the ground on Independent votes by both Bernie and Trump this primary season.



-CNN 2008 Democratic Primary exit polls

[Proud Liberal Dem]

27. It won't matter in the GE

or at least it shouldn't, as those independent votes should hopefully go to Clinton.

[RichVRichV]

31. It will matter in the GE.

And wishing it away isn't going to make it no longer a problem. Independents aren't loyal party followers. They don't feel obligated to vote a ticket regardless of who is running. It's why they're Independents. If they don't like a particular candidate then they won't vote for them. They'll either vote for the other party, vote for third party, or stay home. Independents have no party loyalty to fall in line, otherwise they would be a member of the party already.

And they make up 40% of the electorate!

Keep ignoring those Independent results in the primaries and you're going to be dumbfounded at what just happened come November. It's a real problem and one she needs to correct if she wants to be president.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

33. I guess it will be up to the Indies

to decide whether to vote for Hillary, go third party, or simply not to vote at all, the last two options of which will ultimately help Donald Trump win the WH. The opinion of anybody who either doesn't care about Trump winning or honestly thinks that Hillary is as bad as Trump does not mean much to me.

[Garrett78]

35. While "independent" may imply that, surveys show most are party loyalists.

And some who self-identify as "independent" are radically opposed to other "independents." The truth is millions will vote for Clinton, millions will vote for Trump, and others won't vote for either. Obama lost the independent vote in 2012 (overall and in most swing states), but that didn't prevent him from winning in an electoral college landslide.

[RichVRichV]

39. Independents don't show up for candidates they don't care for.

That is a fact. It's why they're Independents (regardless of how they might lean). I'm glad you have so much faith that the left leaning Independents will show up for Hillary in larger numbers than the right leaning Independents will show up for Trump. However the numbers to this point don't agree with you at all, not even close.

[mythology]

40. Given that Clinton is winning the nomination

and few states have closed primaries in any meaningful sense, if left leaning independents were going to show up for Sanders in the general election, why aren't they showing up in numbers to win the nomination?

[RichVRichV]

42. Because by the time they started making decisions the deadlines had already passed.

Take New York with it's ridiculously early registration date for example. Party members could begin paying attention the day of the election and still vote. Everywhere Independents have had a voice Hillary has done substantially worse. That's not a coincidence and it's not irrelevant to the general election.


I hope you're not counting on the Independents being locked out of the vote in November. That won't be a winning strategy.

[Red Oak]

32. Hillary supporters better figure this one out, fast.

She is strongly despised by a large portion of the electorate. You know this. It isn't going away between now and November.

You think she is going to wipe the floor with Trump? The guy that created the Lyin Ted meme and the low energy Bush meme? What do you think he will call Hillary? You don't think it matters? Really?

How many total votes does Hillary have? How about how many Trump has, and against more competitors.

If you think you have the GE in the bag, you are seriously mistaken.

You are in for a shit storm and will need the very people that you have been knee-capping.

Good luck.

[RichVRichV]

19. And the pattern is Hillary can't win the Independent vote that is critical to the General Election.

Keep trying to diminish open primaries like they're meaningless, but all they're doing is proving how poor of a general election candidate Hillary is. If you can't win the Independent vote in the swing states you can't win the presidency.


Independent votes in swing state primaries:

Indiana - Bernie: 70%, Hillary: 30% (Trump got ~247% more Independent votes than Hillary!)
Florida - Bernie: 55%, Hillary: 44% (Trump got ~68% more Independent votes than Hillary)
Ohio - Bernie: 66%, Hillary: 33% (Bernie had about same Independent votes as Trump)
Virginia - Bernie: 58%, Hillary: 42% (Bernie had more Independent votes than Trump)
North Carolina - Bernie: 58%, Hillary: 34% (Bernie got ~45% more Independent votes than Trump)
Nevada - Bernie: 71%, Hillary: 23% (Bernie got at least 50% more Independent votes than Trump)
Iowa - Bernie: 69%, Hillary: 26% (no vote totals released for Democrats)
New Hampshire - Bernie: 73%, Hillary: 25% (Bernie got ~67% more Independent votes than Trump)
Pennsylvania - Bernie: 72%, Hillary: 26% (Trump got ~132% more Independent votes than Hillary)
Wisconsin - Bernie: 72%, Hillary: 28% (Bernie got ~59% more Independent votes than Trump)



In state after state, even in states that Hillary won huge, she can't seem to win over the Independent identifying voters while Bernie can. You're right there's a pattern here and it's an ugly one for Hillary come November.



-CNN Exit Polls

Percentage comparisons are achieved by multiplying the vote totals for each primary times the exit poll 'Independent percentage' times the 'percent of Independent votes' for each candidate (which makes them approximations).

[pnwmom]

25. Winning "leaning Dem" independents in the Dem primary does not predict that Bernie

will win other independents in General.

And why aren't you concerned that Bernie has won so few votes among the core of the Democratic party -- women an minority voters?

[RichVRichV]

37. Nothing can predict the future as I keep saying.

However the trend that continually happens has to be unsettling to you. You put faith in polls of hundreds of people but you ignore votes of hundreds of thousands of people because it doesn't say what you want. That is a bubble.


And to be blunt, I have more faith in the core Democratic party showing up to vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee come November than Independents showing up to vote for Hillary. The core party is reliable, Independents aren't.


And Bernie has been doing fine among women and minorities. He has won a large percentage of the women vote in the Democratic primary, and has done fine with Native Americans, Muslims, Asians, and Hispanics. The only group he has done very poorly with are blacks. That's disconcerting, but I'm pretty sure in November the black community will not go for Trump even if Bernie is the nominee.

[Garrett78]

29. Obama lost the independent vote in 2012.

And he lost the independent vote in nearly every swing state, including the crucial state of Ohio where he lost the indy vote by double digits. Yet he won Ohio and won re-election in an electoral college landslide.

Most independents are actually party loyalists. A large number are right wing extremists (half of Tea Party members self-identify as "independent&quot , who aren't going to vote for the Democratic candidate no matter who it is.

[RichVRichV]

34. Obama won the Independent votes in Florida, Ohio, and New Hampshire by more

points than he won the states. Those are kind of critical states.


And as Hillary supporters like to point out this primary it's not by how much you win or lose a vote, but by how close the margins are. The difference between the Independent votes for Trump versus Hillary this primary are way larger than the difference between the Independent votes for Romney versus Obama in 2012.


And most independents are not party loyalists. They are Independent because they are fed up with the party. The left leaning Independents may not vote for Republicans (on that part you are correct), but they also may not show up to vote for an uninspiring Democrat. Can you say the same about the Tea Partiers not voting for Trump?

[Garrett78]

36. That's the myth of the "independent" voter.

It's a romantic idea, but surveys make it clear that most are, in fact, party loyalists.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/11/independents-outnumber-democrats-and-republicans-but-theyre-not-very-independent/

In 2012, Obama lost the independent vote in Ohio by double digits and basically tied in Florida.

The bottom line is that getting to 270 electoral college votes is relatively easy for the Democratic candidate. The 19 states (plus DC) that the Dem candidate has won each of the last 6 presidential elections amounts to 242 electoral college votes. Just 28 more and it's a done deal.

[RichVRichV]

38. My bad on Ohio, had the numbers reversed.

As for Florida, the final results was basically a tie (fraction of a percent) The Independent vote was 3 points. Without the Independent vote Obama doesn't win Florida.


None of this changes the fact that the Independents are the first to not show up if they don't like the candidate presented. Which is a major reason they swing the elections.


The saying goes when "Democrats show up they win". In reality the saying should be "when Democratic leaning Independents show up Democrats win".


So far this primary Hillary has lost the Independent votes in a number of the close 2012 swing states by way larger margins than Obama ever did.

[JudyM]

20. Nate Silver also gave her a 90-something % chance of winning Indiana, as I recall.

[pnwmom]

26. He said that the polls said that, but the demographics predicted a Bernie win.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511892222

[Mesee]

51. No they don't.

Tell that to Al Gore or John Kerry.

[CentralCoaster]

4. Whistling past the graveyard. If we let Hillary win the nomination, we'll have a Trump white house.

It's more than a mere possibility, it's a near certainty.

We need to make the right choice, and it ain't Hillary.

[pnwmom]

8. In the real world, Hillary has already won the nomination. Mathematically a win by Bernie

would be like winning the lottery.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

30. Because

Dr. Larry J. Sabato is the founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He is also the University Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, and has had visiting appointments at Oxford University and Cambridge University in Great Britain. A Rhodes Scholar, he received his doctorate from Oxford, and he is the author or editor of two dozen books on American politics.

Prof. Sabato directs the Center for Politics’ Crystal Ball website, a leader in accurately predicting elections since its inception. In 2004, the Crystal Ball notched a 99 percent accuracy rate in predicting all races for House, Senate, Governor and each state’s Electoral College outcome. In 2006, the Pew Research Center and the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Project for Excellence in Journalism recognized the Crystal Ball as the leader in the field of political predictors, noting that the site “came closer than any other of the top ten potential predictors this cycle.”
In 2008, the Crystal Ball came within one electoral vote of the exact tally in the Electoral College, while also correctly picking the result of every single gubernatorial and Senate race across the country. In 2010, the Crystal Ball was the first to forecast a solid Republican takeover of the House. While others were predicting a Romney victory in 2012, the Crystal Ball forecast a substantial Obama margin in the Electoral College, and ultimately missed just two states. The Crystal Ball had a combined 97% accuracy rate in forecasting the Electoral College, Senate, House and gubernatorial contests.
Earlier this year, the Crystal Ball won a “Beast Best” award from The Daily Beast as one of the top political sites on the web.
In 2013 Prof. Sabato won an Emmy award for the television documentary Out of Order, which he produced to highlight the dysfunctional U.S. Senate. In 2014, Prof. Sabato won a second Emmy award for the PBS documentary The Kennedy Half-Century, which covers the life, assassination, and lasting legacy of President John F. Kennedy.
In October 2013, Prof. Sabato and the Center for Politics unveiled the Kennedy Half Century project. The project consisted of a New York Times bestselling book, The Kennedy Half-Century PBS documentary, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) available on Coursera and iTunes U, an app with the complete recordings and transcripts from Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63, and a website (www.thekennedyhalfcentury.com).
Prof. Sabato is also very active on social media. His Twitter feed (@LarrySabato) was named by Time Magazine as one of the 140 best Twitter feeds of 2014.

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/staff_sabato.html

And if that doesn't convince you:

http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics/us-presidential-election-2016/winner



And if that and that doesn't convince you:

I should note that the polls have been telling us this information for some time. In the first half of March, Clinton led Trump by a median of 9 percentage points. Using an SD of 4.5 percentage points, her win probability would come out as 93%. So today’s estimate has been knowable for several months.

http://election.princeton.edu/2016/05/01/what-do-head-to-head-general-election-polls-tell-us-about-november/#more-15484

[Codeine]

6. Meh. Obama lost some states toward the end as well.

I seem I recall him doing reasonably well in November of that year.

[cherokeeprogressive]

43. The two idiots the republicans ran against him couldn't cheat their way to a win at Solitaire.

It's almost like they dared us to vote for Barack Obama.

[Garrett78]

11. I'm not "Hill folk," but I just don't see that.

It's an open primary in a state that's 84% white. Whether it's late March or early May, it fits the profile of a Sanders state. Had it been a caucus or a state with even less diversity, I'm sure he would have won by more than 5 or 6 points.

It's still not as close as 2008 was, and Obama (who also lost some primaries toward the end) had no trouble getting elected in a race against someone far more popular than Trump.

The folks voting for Clinton will vote for her in the GE, and many of those voting for Sanders will vote for Clinton in the GE. Meanwhile, there are some who take part in open primaries who vote for the underdog to increase dissension in the ranks of those they oppose (i.e., people who wouldn't vote for either Sanders or Clinton come November). How many? I don't know, but it's safe to say there are some.

The path to 270 electoral college votes is relatively easy for the Democratic candidate. As the Washington Post pointed out, just winning the 19 states (plus DC) that the Dem candidate has won each of the last 6 presidential elections amounts to 242 electoral college votes. Another 28 and it's a done deal.

[cali]

12. Exactly.

[Tarc]

16. Yea, those late-season losses really put a fatal dent in Obama's fall campaign

Oh. Wait. It didn't.

[virtualobserver]

3. It doesn't make her weaker. It reveals her weakness

[pnwmom]

9. She has the same weakness Obama did -- white men. But Obama lost

among both white men and white women to Mitt Romney -- and Hillary's only losing among white men.

[cali]

13. Uh no. It's more than that. Obama galvanized people. She does not.

[pnwmom]

28. Yes, she does. We just don't like giant rallies. But we do get out to vote -- and millions more

of us have done that for Hillary than for Bernie.

[cherokeeprogressive]

44. No, she doesn't. Quit pretending.

[pnwmom]

48. Yeah, tell that to the millions of people who preferred her to him. n/t

[Ferd Berfel]

7. Who has the best chance

[pnwmom]

10. The Rethugs have a solid file of opposition research that they're salivating to use against Bernie.

He would be their dream candidate, and he and his supporters wouldn't know what hit them.

[Ferd Berfel]

15. SO? They have OP research on Clinton collected since 2008

that they haven't opened up yet. All of this "vetting" that she supposedly had is based on pre-2008 crap.

add that to her negatives - fail

[cali]

17. Irrelevant and wrong. And what dems have on trump is evidently huge.

Dems insiders say that 80% of the stuff they have on trump hasn't been revealed. That's good news for our very unpopular and distrusted nominee. She's lucky she's running against such a weak candidate

[JudyM]

22. You have personal, first-hand knowledge about this? If so you should share with this community.

[cherokeeprogressive]

45. Nothing to share. This one makes it up as she goes.

[JudyM]

50. You are right, it seems. Crickets...

[frylock]

49. We would know exactly what hit us.

blah blah blah socialist.

[Garrett78]

18. If hypothetical GE match-up polling meant anything at this juncture, Dukakis would have become POTUS

Hypothetical GE match-up polls simply don't mean much of anything. Once the GE campaign begins, it's a completely different focus and dynamic.

And it really is silly to suggest that Sanders has been vetted to the extent that Clinton has. Clinton's had a target on her back for decades now. Sanders is pretty new to the spotlight--hell, there are still people who don't know who he is.

[ScreamingMeemie]

14. Indiana is working class, like Michigan and Wisconsin before it.

It can be twisted into whatever pretzel anyone would like to shape it, but that speaks to me. At the end of the day, it's a difference between the haves and the struggling to keep what they have. Clinton burned the Midwest, and they have returned that in kind.

And no, I don't think Obama and Clinton are very much the same. Clinton truly does only care for one class of people, one income. And it ain't mine.

[Garrett78]

23. If by "working class," you mean it has workers, that's true of every state.

Anyway, I'll repeat what I wrote earlier:

Assuming Clinton becomes POTUS, differences in governance could (and likely will) result from unforeseen events and cultural shifts, and there are always going to be personality (as well as personnel) differences. But for the most part, I fully expect a Clinton Administration to govern the same as the Obama Administration has. *Note: To some, that's a good thing and to others not so much. I'm not making a value judgement one way or the other.

It's important to keep in mind that the POTUS doesn't create systems. The POTUS operates within systems. Systems aren't static, of course, but mass movements are required to alter them. For example, the institution of marriage has experienced shifts, not because of Supreme Court decisions but because of mass movements.

The US is extremely individualistic and oriented toward the Cult of Personality, which results in people vastly overestimating the power and influence (for better or for worse) of individual actors.

Clinton is relying on the same constituents that Obama relied upon to win in '08 (i.e., the increasingly diverse base of the Democratic Party), and she's beating Sanders by a greater margin than Obama beat her by 8 years ago.

[mythology]

41. Have they moved Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri out of the midwest?

The story of the primaries is demographics. With very few exceptions the individual primaries or caucuses have been able to be predicted by demographics. You can throw up whatever narrative you want about the midwest hating Clinton, but she's clearly won states there.

[Joob]

21. Okay what if trump did everything Hillary did in her past

What if he keeps flip flopping on abor- oh wait... they both do.

[wiggs]

46. Yes. Plus, it's my theory that Sanders does extra well when it's clear that

Clinton will get the nomination. I think there are many people (like me) who would rather vote for Bernie because 1) he's awesome 2) the movement is important. But some of those believe it would be easier for Trump to defeat Bernie than Hillary (like me) and when it comes time to cast a vote in a close, unresolved primary they will vote Hillary. Hillary has done well lately, freeing many Indianans to vote with their hearts instead of with an eye toward the general.

This tendency is also a result of Hillary beginning to tilt money and rhetoric toward the general.

[Garrett78]

47. All good points.

I'll just add that some who are voting in open Democratic contests have undoubtedly no intention of supporting the Democratic candidate in November, regardless of who it is. They see a benefit in causing dissension among the ranks of those they oppose, so they cast a vote for the underdog to make the race closer.