2016 Postmortem

Recursion

(56,582 posts) Tue May 10, 2016, 10:20 PM May 2016

Yet again Sanders leads among voters who want "less liberal" policies than Obama's

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/live-coverage-of-the-west-virginia-and-nebraska-primaries/482037/

One surprising result from NBC exit polls is that Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton among voters who say that the next president should pursue “less liberal policies” relative to Barack Obama. Given that Sanders runs far to Clinton’s left on a wide array of issues, it might be reasonable to conclude that perhaps West Virginia voters aren’t all that familiar with the candidate or his policy platform. Interestingly, Sanders also wins out over Clinton for voters who want “more liberal policies,” while Clinton wins among voters who want to continue the president’s current policies. The polling indicates that while West Virginia voters see Clinton as tied to Obama, they see Sanders as something different. Beyond that, however, they may not know exactly what’s different about him, and whether he would bring more or less liberal policies to the White House.

The exit polls also suggest that any results from the West Virginia primary should be taken with a grain of salt in terms of what they might mean with respect to Sanders's agenda. The senator may win the state, but that doesn't necessarily mean that coal country voters are validating his agenda, which, among many other things, calls for the United States to transition away from fossil fuels. They may simply be voting against Clinton, a political known entity.

I've been surprised by the consistency of this: voters who say they think Obama is too liberal tend to support Sanders.