UVA Center for Politics: The Sanders Tax

[brooklynite]

The Vermont senator’s campaign of course argues that he would expand the Democratic electorate, as Sanders’ pollster told the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. Meanwhile, there are reasons to think that the Sanders path is built on a goal, expanding youth participation, that has historically been very difficult to achieve, as David Broockman and Joshua Kalla argued in Vox. Additionally, Sanders does not seem to have as much appeal to white voters with a four-year college degree as some other Democrats.

In our view, we think a Sanders nomination would tilt the election more toward Trump, to the point where the ratings would reflect him as something of a favorite. However, we would not put Trump over 270 electoral votes in our ratings, at least not initially and based on the information we have now.

But these ratings changes would force Democrats to sweep the two Toss-ups, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and also hang onto the Leans Democratic states, specifically Michigan, that if Sanders proves to be weak will be very much in play.

Here’s what we’re thinking we would do. Map 2 shows hypothetical revised ratings. To be clear, these are not changes we are making to our ratings now, but if Sanders seems to grab ahold of the nomination in the coming weeks, we likely will make most if not all of them.



http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/the-sanders-tax/