WAPO: Bernie Sanders's strange behavior

[onenote]

140. It's both more complicated and simpler than you suggest.

In 2016, Price got 200,000 votes (61.7%) v. his opponent's 125,000 votes (38%). Looks like a clear landslide. And on the numbers it is. But look behind the numbers. Price spent $2 million in 2016. His opponent raised and spent exactly $0. Didn't have a website. No one knew him. No one ever seemed to see him. Yet he garnered nearly 40 percent of the vote.

In 2014, a non-presidential year in which repubs picked up 13 seats nationwide, Price spent $1.7 million. His opponent, spent $14,500. Yet his opponent still managed to get around 34 percent. And in 2012, another big turnout year, despite being outspent by $1.74 million, Price's opponent still got over 35 percent of the vote.

So it appears that one factor that matters a lot is money. Ossoff had it and spent it and it made a big difference. But as seen, even a candidate that spent nothing in 2016 did appreciably better than a candidate that spent something in 2012. And that's because the district is changing.

Ossoff's challenge is turnout. The number of votes cast for the invisible Democrat against Price in the 2014 off-year election was nearly 33,000 more than number cast for Ossoff, despite the millions spent. Yes, it's an off year election, but its a very large pool of voters that need to be convinced that their vote now is as important as the vote they cast six months ago. Moreover, there's an additional pool of voters that supported Sanders in the Democratic primary but stayed home in November. How big is that pool? I have no idea, but in a close race, which likely will be, they could be decisive.

So how do you get the 2016 voters who stayed home last week and the primary voters who stayed home in November to show up?You pull out all the stops. More GOTV for sure. But also, getting those voters interested and excited and a Sanders primary voter who stayed home in November and again last week might actually be persuaded more by hearing Sanders has made this race a priority than he or she will be by someone knocking on their door who can't say to them, Bernie and Hillary agree on this --- we need Ossoff in the House.

So it really is that simple in the end.