Where Sanders's support eroded in Virginia and North Carolina

[RandySF]

Consider North Carolina. Below are three maps, showing the 2016 presidential vote by precinct, the per-precinct vote in the 2016 primary and the vote on Tuesday night. In the 2016 primary, there is a lot of green, representing Sanders, in the western part of the state, as well as some closer to the eastern coast. On the 2020 map? A lot of that turned blue. In 2016, Sanders won 35 percent of precincts, but in 2020 that number shrank to 7 percent.

In both maps, the areas where Sanders lost support appear at a glance to be areas that voted more heavily Republican in 2016. In Virginia, where precinct-level data from the 2016 general election were available, that wasn’t actually the case. The places where Sanders’s percentage of the vote dropped the most since 2016 were generally the places where Hillary Clinton did the best against Donald Trump.

It’s hard to know what this means without other information. Is it a function of Biden performing more poorly in places that lean Republican? Of Sanders supporters in more heavily Clinton areas staying home? Of those supporters having been more likely to back Sanders in 2016 out of opposition to Clinton?

What’s particularly interesting about Virginia is that Clinton won the state by about the same margin as Biden did on Tuesday. Despite that, Sanders did about 12 points worse in each Virginia precinct on average than he had in 2016, while Biden fared only about 6 points worse on average than Clinton had. One result? A much more geographically extensive victory.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/04/where-sanderss-support-eroded-virginia-north-carolina/

[Cha]

1. KR.. Thank you!

[relayerbob]

2. My wife and I were discussing this sort of point overall

We came to the conclusion, it was basically this: "Of those supporters having been more likely to back Sanders in 2016 out of opposition to Clinton".