"Swing Voters Draw the Line at Socialists": New Polling Suggests Key Voters Are Skeptical on Bernie

[Awsi Dooger]

13. You've actually got posters here mocking the notion of a swing voter

They are simply ignorant. No other way to describe it. It is laughable when they trot out Rachel Bitecofer as a source, someone who demonstrates no conception whatsoever of how cycles vary based on situational landscape. She's actually forging 2020 forecasts based on 2018 midterm. If that isn't classic stupidity, nothing qualifies.

Why don't we have a panel with Rachel Maddow and Rachel Bitecofer? Both of them can wave their fresh findings in the air and allow the real world to sail comfortably over their head.

This is why Nate Silver is so superior. His formulas apply logical variables from all directions with a foundational backdrop and numerical approximation. It is not moronically assertive of a new reality that no one understands except himself.

Primaries do not resemble general elections at all. That's where analysts get in trouble, particularly the ones relying on turnout. Primaries are likeminded people so there can indeed be wild swings of preference in short span. Everyone is seeing and prioritizing basically the same thing, so they react similarly and quickly. There are also massive gaps in enthusiasm from one candidate's base to the next.

It leads to idiotic lollipop assumptions of the same dynamic transferring to fall. Wait until the nation sees our Bernie! Waves of voters changing mind to flock to his side. New young voters from every direction. Meanwhile the reality is stern and unimpressed. Those conservative and liberal percentages are extremely rigid in each state. That's why I have referenced them here since 2002. It's not water free flowing in a fish tank. Those percentages are like an unbendable wall. I guarantee a Rachel Bitecofer type doesn't know a thing about that, while Nate Silver does. I have seen him reference them many times.

That Wisconsin general election is dictated by those rigid walls of 36% self-identified conservatives and 27% self-identified liberals. So little margin for error when you are on the short stick. Trump received a lower than typical split of conservatives in 2016. That will not happen again. Nationally he got 81% among conservatives and 88% among Republicans. Romney in defeat four years earlier got 82% among conservatives and 93% among Republicans. Using Wisconsin as example again, Romney got 95% of Republican support while Trump was only 90%. There is no wavering on the right anymore. Trump is at 97% approval among Republicans in some polls. When polls in those midwestern swing states don't look as good as we want or expect them to look, that is what is going on. We are facing a considerably stronger opponent in 2020 than 2016.

There are comparisons here to 1972 and 1988. It won't be like either one. A Bernie Sanders nomination will closely resemble 2016. Narrow defeat. Instead of our party failing to prioritize the correct states, we will campaign aggressively in the proper areas but be turned away via sheer preference, those white swing voters allowing benefit of a doubt to incumbency while refusing to accept a socialist.

Either you understand that or you don't. As I've mentioned, it's quite simple for me because I live in Florida, where it already played out in 2018 with socialism fear attaching Gillum, and I have lots of right wing friends based on my decades betting sports in Las Vegas, and I attend countless college sporting events dominated by that loud white crowd.

This afternoon at a Canes basketball game I saw a guy with a T-shirt that said, "Breaking News: Nobody Cares." That's unfortunately extremely accurate. There won't be a wave of unrest to throw out Donald Trump. The right track/wrong track number was 31/61 for -30 net on election day 2016. Right now it is basically right track 40% wrong track 54%. That may sound like bad news for the incumbent, until you realize it is almost exactly the same as the November 2012 breakdown when Obama won handily. The number that day was right track 40.6% and wrong track 54.1%.

The nation is not going to feel fairly good about the direction of the country and decide to switch course to a socialist. There are always hints in the midterm -- 46% of Floridians saying Gillum was too liberal for the state, and 42% of Georgians saying the same about Abrams. Those are astonishing numbers. I wonder if Rachel Bitecofer is aware of them, or the significance? Allow me to howl at her expense.

The variable is not complicated: We're going to reject anyone we consider too liberal, and not give it a second thought