Article on Sanders-Trump voters [View all]

[Willie Pep]

I don't know if this article has been posted here yet but John Sides wrote an interesting article in The Washington Post on whether Bernie Sanders supporters cost Hillary Clinton the election. When discussing the profile of Sanders-Trump voters Sides writes:

Perhaps the most important feature of Sanders-Trump voters is this: They weren’t really Democrats to begin with.

Of course, we know that many Sanders voters did not readily identify with the Democratic Party as of 2016, and Schaffner found that Sanders-Trump voters were even less likely to identify as Democrats. Sanders-Trump voters didn’t much approve of Obama either.

In fact, this was true well before 2016. In the VOTER Survey, we know how Sanders-Trump voters voted in 2012, based on an earlier interview in November 2012. Only 35 percent of them reported voting for Obama, compared with 95 percent of Sanders-Clinton voters. In other words, Sanders-Trump voters were predisposed to support Republicans in presidential general elections well before Trump’s candidacy.

Schaffner found that what distinguished Sanders-Trump voters from Sanders-Clinton voters wasn’t their attitudes about trade, but their attitudes about race. When asked whether whites are advantaged, Sanders-Trump voters were much more likely to disagree than were Sanders-Clinton voters.

Full article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/24/did-enough-bernie-sanders-supporters-vote-for-trump-to-cost-clinton-the-election/?utm_term=.ffa58d907760

I think this is an important point because I don't think that Sanders really did much at all to damage Clinton among likely Democratic voters. The Sanders supporters who voted for Trump were likely going to vote for the Republicans in the presidential election and contrary to popular belief these folks weren't economic populists but more likely vote based on racial issues.

The article doesn't touch on Sanders voters who voted third party or stayed home but I wouldn't be surprised if these people also turned out to be less likely to regularly vote for Democrats. From what I read online (I know, not an accurate way of measuring things) many Bernie or Bust types were likely the kind of people who sat out elections or voted for the Greens. They didn't strike me as disgruntled Democrats.

In any event I thought this would be an interesting article to discuss since it sheds some light on which Sanders supporters didn't vote for Clinton. It looks like many of them weren't Democrats at all and likely favored the Republican Party in presidential elections.