Bernie Sanders says he’s more electable than Hillary Clinton. Um, no. (Hillary Grp) [View all]

[DeepModem Mom]

Bernie Sanders's campaign released a strategy memo to reporters on Wednesday aimed at pushing back at the notion that he is losing ground in his primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. One argument in it stood out to me: Sanders is a better general-election candidate than Clinton.

Here's the essence of the Sanders camp's argument:

The totality of this data begins to raise real questions about the conventional wisdom’s assumptions regarding which Democratic candidate would fare better in the general election. That Bernie outperforms Clinton with independents and Republicans by wide margins (by net 22 point[s] and 40 points, respectively) should suggest that he is actually better positioned in the general election than is Clinton. The head-to-head match-ups bear this out as Bernie does comparably well if not better than Clinton in essentially every general election match-up with leading Republicans.

Twenty two points! 40 points! President Sanders, here we come!

Ahem. A little clarification is in order.

The "wide margins" that the Sanders camp cites are tied to favorable/unfavorable numbers, not head-to-head horse-race ones. So, yes, according to a recent WaPo-ABC News poll, Sanders has "only" a net negative 30 favorable (26 fav/56 unfav) score among Republicans while Clinton has a net negative 70 (15 fav/85 unfav). But, this assertion — "The fact that Sanders is seen in such a different light by Republicans indicates he has more potential to win a larger share of Republican voters in a general election than does Clinton" — is a bridge way too far.

Presidential elections are the most polarizing campaigns that exist in America. People retreat to their partisan camp and stay there....There's just no real crossover vote in a presidential election.

Clinton's numbers, because of her longtime national profile, have that partisanship already baked in. She's totally known and totally divisive. Democrats like-to-love her; Republicans don't. Nothing will change about those numbers between now and next November.

...The Sanders campaign seems to be mistaking Republicans not really having a strong impression of the senator from Vermont to him having a genuine chance of winning any decent chunk of Republican voters as the Democratic nominee. (There's a big portion of the memo dedicated to how Sanders does better than Clinton in head-to-head matchups with the most likely Republican nominees.)

That's almost certainly not the case. If Sanders did wind up as the Democratic nominee, tens of millions would be spent by conservative groups familiarizing Republican voters with his record — which begins with the fact that he is an avowed democratic socialist....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/19/bernie-sanders-says-hes-more-electable-than-hillary-clinton-um/?postshare=7381447965861153&tid=ss_tw via Chris Cillizza, Washington Post