Five Thirty Eight: Sanders Shouldn’t Drop Out For Clinton’s Sake
We’re getting to the point in the primary season when people turn their focus to the general election. Since Hillary Clinton tore through the Northeast on April 26, the Bernie Sanders campaign has laid off staff and suffered fundraising setbacks. But Sanders has intimated that he will keep fighting, even contesting the Democratic convention in July. So, could Sanders damage Clinton’s chances in the general election? Do long, hard-fought primaries weaken the candidate who emerges from them victorious?
That question, which is probably even more pressing for Republicans this year, has preoccupied political scientists for decades. The hypothesis that divisive primaries are detrimental is intuitive: Candidates attack one another, dividing the party and alienating supporters. But research findings have been mixed.
In a 1998 study of presidential elections, University of New Mexico political scientist Lonna Atkeson challenged the theory by suggesting that divisive primaries occur when the party is already divided. In other words, divisive primaries are the symptom, not the disease. We’re in the midst of an open primary, but take recent incumbent presidents as an example: Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992 ran into trouble in the general election, but not because they were challenged in the primaries. They attracted challengers in the primaries because they were already in political trouble. Controlling for factors that account for this political trouble — the strength of the economy and the president’s popularity — Atkeson found that the effect of divisive primaries on how well the nominee does in the general election drops out. In other words, divisive primaries don’t make the incumbent party vulnerable; the causation runs the other way.
And more here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/sanders-shouldnt-drop-out-for-clintons-sake/
Hopefully both sides can knock it off and realize that we should let him finish the race, then unite behind Hillary. No need for this sniping constantly.
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