538- High-information voters love Elizabeth Warren -- and not Bernie Sanders

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Bulletpoint No. 2: High-information voters love Elizabeth Warren — and not Bernie Sanders


In a previous Silver Bulletpoints, I asked whether candidates who are popular among high-education voters, such as Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren, are also popular among high-information voters. There’s no particular advantage to overperforming with college-educated voters; almost 65 percent of voters in the 2016 Democratic primaries did not have a four-year college degree. But doing well with high-information voters is usually a bullish sign. These voters are more likely to judge the candidates on factors beyond name recognition, and so may be leading indicators for how other voters will view the race once they’ve acquired more information. Moreover, high-information voters are more likely to eventually turn out to vote.

Quinnipiac addressed this in their most recent poll, asking Democrats how much attention they’ve been paying to the campaign and breaking out their topline results on that basis. Among voters paying a lot of attention to the campaign, Warren got 15 percent of the vote, and Sanders got just 8 percent. Among voters who are paying little or no attention, however, Warren got just 5 percent of the vote against Sanders’s 28 percent.

Warren, Biden gain ground among high-information voters
Share of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters who supported each candidate, by how much attention they’ve been paying to the election campaign for president

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/maybe-the-moderate-democrats-running-are-more-popular-with-swing-voters/

[Fiendish Thingy]

1. Once the debates start, the ranks of high information voters will grow significantly

And name recognition polls will become even more meaningless.

[Cha]

4. Biden's lead with those who say they're paying a lot of attention..

Among those who say they're paying a lot of attention, he leads Sanders and Warren 42% - 8% - 15%.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=129464

[honest.abe]

2. Sounds about right.

Liz has real workable intelligent proposals.

[NYMinute]

3. The corollary is .... OUCH!! nt

[Gothmog]

15. Yep

[Cha]

5. Warren, Biden gain ground among high-information voters

Thank you!

[Gothmog]

6. This does not surprise me

[demigoddess]

7. good!

[oasis]

8. Interesting. nt

[MH1]

9. Good. If the primary shakes out to Biden vs Warren, I would be very happy.

That's not to say there aren't others I'd be happy with, I am still very undecided, and like quite a few. But I think both Biden and Warren have some serious chops to get this thing done.

[NastyRiffraff]

10. No surprise there

High information voters tend to care about actual policies and accomplishments rather than slogans.

[Politicub]

11. The delta between low-information and high-information voters is striking

Sanders has an air of celebrity about him. But it seems to fall away once people start to become more engaged with the process.

My theory is that Sanders’ hiring of over-the-top staffers and cultivation of controversial surrogates was misguided. The ridiculous attacks against other dems is a real turnoff to those voters who start paying close attention.

It has turned this high-information voter off, and I went into this primary season with an open mind about Sanders. If you look at my post history, I tried to defend him against attacks after and around the time of the Fox town hall.

Maybe I’m wrong and his approach will win out at the end of the day. I’m continuing to keep an open mind. I do prefer Warren over Sanders, though, and strongly.

The Harris and Buttigieg campaigns excite me. I want to see them fixing and improving our system. Biden’s campaign makes me feel optimistic about the American dream, though I disagree with his reconciliation-with-Republicans message. I understand he is trying to peel away more moderate Republicans. Still, it makes me uneasy.

[Hortensis]

12. Interesting comments, thanks. Definitely a striking delta,

and I suspect you're entirely right that what works well for a dissenting minority is repelling the larger body of Democrats looking at him now. Plus, besides his real baggage now, we just have so many possible choices.

I'm really happy also to see some other good candidates grow in approval. I'd throw Warren and Klobuchar in with Harris and Mayor Pete. I'm a stronger liberal than Klobuchar for sure, but her proven effectiveness and competence put her on my list.

Your "uneasiness" is very common, of course, and I'd like to look at that from another direction.

What if we don't appeal to the relatively few but critical percentage of the kind of Republicans who could and just might vote Democratic? What if division continued at the current levels and every 2 and 4 years power kept shifting back and forth, with both parties vying to undo what was just done and block actions in future? As Obama said, our center is broken. How long could that broken electorate continue without disaster? "Divided we fall"?

And let's face it, in this election alone we could lose everything. That is now obviously what the RW powers behind the Republican Party intend -- to gain and keep power, and for that the electorate has to lose it.

As for improving our systems, to me the argument being pushed by the farther left that the choice must be between either "big change" or "centrist" "little change" is false -- completely untrue -- and deliberately so.

It's entirely possible to have big, bold solutions done in an already accepted way. This is exactly how the giant re-deal of the New Deal programs came about. Socialists, communists and fascists were all on the march in the 1930s, a similarly dangerously unstable era, but the New Deal accomplished huge changes and advances within America's existing systems and were very quickly integrated into the fabric of America.

The most recent example of this as a proven approach, the ACA, similarly quickly became very popular with a large majority of Americans, including most conservatives. It was a huge new government program and a tremendous advance in national wellbeing, but how it was accomplished remained within the parameters of comfort, of what people were already used to and would accept -- because of the New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society, etcetera, programs that came before. And because of this "incremental" advance, not just Democrats but Americans across the spectrum now want more, want the rest, what's still needed.

But getting our people elected and how more advances would be passed depends on what a majority large enough to overcome the RW's electoral college advantage will vote for. And for that, we need more voters to choose our solutions. And in many cases for those on the right who are not up to that, to just stay home on election day...

[Celerity]

13. Warren is streets beyond Bernie on every level

[Maru Kitteh]

14. But of course. nt