Hillary Clinton won Nevada’s caucus last night by about 5.5 percentage points. We don’t have official voting results by race, but polls taken before voters caucused (“entrance polls”) suggested the following demographic breakdown:
The Clinton campaign and severaljournalists have raised questions about whether Sanders actually won the Latino vote. They argue that Clinton “won the parts of Nevada that are most heavily Latino” and that there are also reasons to doubt the accuracy of previous polling of Latino voters in Nevada.
It’s certainly possible that the entrance polls are unreliable. However, if that’s true, the Clinton campaign and these journalists should not make that claim selectively. The polls actually matched the final results in Nevada incredibly well, as shown in the graph below.
So if Clinton did better with Latino voters than the entrance polls suggest, she did worse with other demographic groups. Suppose, for example, that Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon’s speculation that she actually won something more like 61 percent of the Latino vote is correct (that result would be way outside the poll’s margin of error, but let’s not worry about that at the moment). If we assume that the entrance polls got the Black vote and Other Non-White vote totals correct, that would mean that Clinton actually lost the White vote by 9 percentage points, not 2. If we assume that the entrance polls got the White vote correct and the Black vote wrong, then Sanders lost the Black vote by 15 percentage points, not 54. And if we assume that the entrance polls got both the Black and White votes correct, then Clinton, instead of winning the Other Non-White vote by 2 percentage points, lost it by 55. It’s probably most likely, if the entrance polls are indeed wrong, that none of the above numbers can be trusted.
The Clinton campaign would probably prefer to believe that she won the Latino vote while losing the White vote by more than the polls indicate. Sanders supporters (myself included) would probably prefer to believe the entrance polls or, at the very least, to believe that he still did very well among Latino voters while doing better among Black voters than the entrance polls indicate. The truth is that we cannot know for sure.
What we do know for sure, however, is that the entrance polls cannot be selectively wrong. The Clinton campaign and journalists reporting on the results would do well to remember that.
Update (2/23/16): The William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonprofit that has been “conduct[ing] research aimed at improving the level of political and economic participation in Latino and other underrepresented communities” since 1985, issued a strong statement today on this issue. An excerpt:
Simply put there is no relevant statistical inconsistency between Edison’s Entry Poll results for Latinos, Whites, and Blacks and the overall election results. Based on this fact WCVI concludes that there is no statistical basis to question the Latino vote breakdown between Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders.
We note that some analysts have said that Secretary Clinton’s victories in heavily Latino precincts proved that she won the Latino vote. However[,] the methodology of using heavily Latino or “barrio” precincts to represent Latino voting behavior has been considered ineffective and discarded for more than 30 years due to non-barrio residential patterns…common among Latino voters since the 1980’s.
The reason Sanders probably won the Latino vote despite losing heavily Latino precincts? He did well among young Latino voters who may not live in majority-Latino areas (thanks to Jonathan Cohn for the heads up on that).
Lela Spielberg is a lifelong advocate for gender equality. She has worked in the education and social services field as a teacher, policy analyst, and program designer at a local family foundation in Washington, DC. In this post, she describes how the dialogue about Bernie Sanders and his supporters illustrates some of the problems with a particular brand of American feminism.
Lela Spielberg
Over the last month, as Bernie Sanders has gained popularity in the polls, the media and prominent political figures have ramped up their attacks against him. At first, these attacks were unsurprising to me: “he’s inexperienced;” “he’s too idealistic;” “he’ll never get anything done.” These statements are part of the typical chorus of attacks that Washington insiders and committed capitalists have used against progressive candidates since the beginning of time. I won’t spend my time debunking these myths, as there have been several articles, includingones on this blog, that have done so already. However, about a month ago, a new strand of attacks emerged that I have found more troubling – as a woman, as a millennial, and as an American. These attacksallege that Bernie and/or his supporters are anti-feminist. Not only are they untrue, but their language also demonstrates the deep sense of elitism and entitlement that pervades traditional American feminism.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. I’m a Bernie supporter. I’ve identified as a socialist ever since I learned about the concept in my eighth-grade world history class, and I’ve admired Bernie’s activism since I moved to Washington over six years ago. Until Bernie jumped into the race, I had planned on casting a rather unenthusiastic vote for Hillary Clinton. While I believe Clinton to be smart and hard-working, her past support for bad trade deals, aggressive war, and welfare reform are not aligned with my values of fairness, peace, and economic equality. Bernie, on the other hand, has spent decades fighting for these values and has a record to prove it.
Moreover, all of these issues are at the heart of what I believe feminism to be—fighting for fairness for all women, regardless of their race, sexual identity, education level, and economic position. Consider, for example, that two thirds of workers who earn the minimum wage are women. While Clinton has voiced support for raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour, only Sanders has embraced and aggressively campaigned for the $15 minimum wage that thousands of women throughout the United States are demanding. Or think about the young women and girls being rounded up and deported by the Obama Administration. Clinton defended these actions six months ago and still won’t commit to ending them. Sanders, on the other hand, has spoken out strongly against the deportation raids and in support of Central American children. To me, feminism is not just about abortion rights and breaking the glass ceiling; it’s also about making sure that all women have access to good, reliable prenatal care and early screenings for breast cancer under a Medicare for All health care system, which Bernie Sanders supports and Hillary Clinton does not. Feminism is about fighting for the empowerment of disadvantaged women both in the United States and around the world.
Yet powerful public figures, including two “feminist icons,” have called my feminism (as well as the seriousness of my convictions) into question by mocking my choice to support Bernie over Hillary. While they’ve since issued partial apologies for their most egregious comments – Gloria Steinem’s assertion that young women only support Bernie because “the boys are with Bernie” and Madeleine Albright’s statement that “there is a special place in hell for women who won’t help other women” by voting for Hillary Clinton – the fact that they made them at all, and their failure to really own them, propagates an American feminism that isn’t about supporting all women, but is about supporting wealthy, powerful, white women. So do comments by the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who said in an interview with the New York Times in January that she sees “a complacency among the generation of young women whose entire lives have been lived after Roe v. Wade was decided.”
The idea that young women are complacent and don’t have a sense of history is wrong. I appreciate the strides women have made, in politics and in boardrooms across the country. These accomplishments are wonderful, and they should be celebrated and continued. However, in crowing about these accomplishments without acknowledging that most of them only benefit middle- and upper-class white women, it is Steinem, Albright, and Wasserman Schultz who forget the lessons of history. Even with Roe v. Wade, poor and working-class women still lack access to safe, affordable abortions and family planning choices that their wealthier female counterparts have. This deep inequality that has only grown in recent generations is one of the reasons I am voting for Bernie Sanders.
As it turns out, my peers feel similarly – Sanders leads Hillary when it comes to female voters under 45, and he beat Hillary by 11 percentage points among all women in the New Hampshire primary. Yet many media voices continue to paint Bernie supporters as mostly male by using the term “Berniebro.” Coined in an article in the Atlantic, the Berniebro label originally characterized Bernie supporters as “white; well-educated; middle-class (or, delicately, ‘upper middle-class’); and aware of NPR podcasts and jangly bearded bands.”
Numerous other commentators, including Paul Krugman, have now picked up on this label. In their estimation, the Berniebro is not only a privileged white man, but a sexist, online harasser, too. In reality, however, the term Berniebro is sexist. When it isn’t accusing women of being “bros,” it’s ignoring the voices of women (and, for that matter, the people of color and working-class people) who support Bernie.
Let me be clear: I am not defending anyone, Bernie supporter or otherwise, who makes sexist, nasty remarks about Hillary Clinton. Nor am I denying that Hillary Clinton encounters sexism that Bernie Sanders and other men never will – she absolutely does. However, I am challenging those writing and speaking about the election, and about Bernie and Hillary in particular, to broaden their thinking and definition of feminism. Kevin Young and Diana C. Sierra Becerra wrote a wonderful piece for Alice Walker’s blog where they eloquently sum up this tension within the feminist community. They write:
In the US feminism is often understood as the right of women — and wealthy white women most of all — to share in the spoils of capitalism and US imperial power. By not confronting the exclusion of non-whites, foreigners, working-class people, and other groups from this vision, liberal feminists are missing a crucial opportunity to create a more inclusive, more powerful movement.
We have a long way to go before we have the truly inclusive, powerful feminist movement that the authors envision. Electing Clinton won’t get us there. To be fair, neither will electing Sanders. But not shaming women for casting a vote against economic, racial, and myriad other forms of inequality is one place we can start.
Of those who know who he is, most voters like Bernie Sanders. He is the only major presidential candidate with a positive net favorability rating among the general public. Yet despite these facts and his wildly popular ideas, he remains the underdog in the race for the Democratic nomination. Why?
The answer appears to be perceived electability. When I’ve phone banked for Sanders, I’ve talked to a lot of voters who say they’re a big fan of his, and they’re glad he’s in the race, but they just aren’t sure he can win a general election. They’re scared of the Republicans, they tell me, and their foremost concern is making sure the Democratic nominee, no matter who it is, wins in November.
I think this attitude is misguided, both because there are large and important differences between the Democratic candidates and because electability arguments can be circular, self-fulfilling prophecies. In no small part because electability considerations are speculative, we’re much better served by casting our vote for the candidate whose record and platform is most aligned with our values.
That said, given that a lot of people think about electability, it’s worth looking at some evidence. The numbers indicate that the Democrats’ electoral prospects would be better under Bernie Sanders than under Hillary Clinton for two important reasons:
1. Young people, who arguably won both the 2008 and 2012 elections for Barack Obama, love Sanders. Many do not like Clinton.
In Iowa’s Democratic primary, Sanders beat Clinton among Democrats aged 18-29 by 70 percentage points. In New Hampshire, he won that age group by 65 percentage points. And in the most recent national poll from Quinnipiac University, Sanders held a net favorability rating among 18-34 year-old voters of all political affiliations that was 57 percentage points better than Clinton’s (see graph below). Sanders is more popular among millennials right now than Obama was among young voters in 2008 and 2012.
On voting results alone, my generation won Indiana and North Carolina for Barack Obama in 2008 and Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio in 2012. In addition, the youth contribution to electoral success extends beyond the vote; as Pew reported in 2008:
…young people provided not only their votes but also many enthusiastic campaign volunteers. Some may have helped persuade parents and older relatives to consider Obama’s candidacy. And far more young people than older voters reported attending a campaign event while nearly one-in-ten donated money to a presidential candidate.
It is extremely hard to believe that millennials would turn out and vote for Clinton in such large numbers if she becomes the Democratic nominee; over 41,000 people, for example, have already pledged to write Bernie in if he loses to Clinton in the primary. There is also an undeniable “enthusiasm gap” between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns; even if most Sanders supporters would suck it up and turn out for Clinton if she ends up as the nominee, which is hardly guaranteed, we won’t see anything close to the volunteerism millennials are already engaged in on Bernie’s behalf. If your main concern is electability, do you really want to gamble with the key demographic group from the last two presidential elections?
2. Independents and Republicans are more likely to vote for Bernie Sanders than for Hillary Clinton.
Sanders also has much higher favorability ratings than Clinton among non-Democrats; his net favorability among them was 39 percentage points better than Clinton’s in the most recent Quinnipiac poll, and in New Hampshire, he won Independents by 47 percentage points. His class-based, anti-Establishment message resonates. If you heard Sanders speak at Liberty University (a conservative hotbed; see video below) last September, you know what I’m talking about; his direct, honest pitch for people who disagree about social issues to band together in pursuit of economic justice was very well-received. He didn’t win an army of converts overnight, but he did get people thinking; one Liberty alum estimates that half of the Liberty community could potentially Feel the Bern.
Read this take from teenage-conservative-icon-turned-Sanders-supporter CJ Pearson. Listen to the growing contingent of “Lifelong Republicans Who Love Bernie Sanders.” Or consider my (admittedly anecdotal) experience talking to several voters and reading numerous Internet comments of folks who are deciding between Donald Trump and Sanders. As Daniel Denvir notes, that doesn’t mean that Sanders will win over the most prejudiced Trump supporters, but his brand of economic populism may make him “the Democrats’ only chance to wrest white working class voters from a billionaire’s hate-filled dystopian rage.”
The coalition we’re seeing for Sanders in the primaries already indicates the appeal he holds for voters who less consistently vote Democratic. Polling data shows that “Sanders has forged connections to lower-income New Hampshire and Iowa Democrats that eluded Obama and every other progressive primary challenger in recent history.” Unlike Clinton, Sanders may be able to turn out people who don’t often vote, bring in some folks who usually vote against their economic interests, and unite both groups with traditional Democratic voting blocs.
Polls that explore head-to-head matchups also suggest that Sanders would do better than Clinton against each of the top five Republican candidates. Clinton-backer Paul Krugman calls such polls meaningless (he did, however, cite them himself to raise concerns about Barack Obama’s electability in March of 2008), and I personally wouldn’t read too much into them – we’re still very far out from the general election and opinions can surely change – but arguments that these numbers will flip remain completely evidence-free. Here’s why:
– Republican attacks would work at least as well against Hillary Clinton as they would against Bernie Sanders.
Yes, Bernie Sanders defines himself as a Democratic Socialist. If he is the nominee, GOP attack ads would surely use that label to cast him as insane, dangerous, and/or un-American…which is exactly the same thingthey did to Barack Obama for eight years and would surely do to Hillary Clinton as well.
Anyone who would run screaming from a 30-second ad decrying socialism without doing any research isn’t going to vote for Sanders or Clinton in a general election. But since most of Sanders’ platform, as mentioned earlier, is extremely popular, many voters who actually do their homework will quickly learn that his brand of democratic socialism isn’t scary at all (it’s not even particularly radical).
While the Republican party would undoubtedly dream up additional smears to use against Sanders, the GOP doesn’texactlyhave a crisis of imagination – or a lack of materialtowork with – when it comes to attacking Clinton. The idea that Sanders, a candidate whose popularity continues to grow with his name recognition, would be hurt more by such attacks than Clinton, whose favorability has steadily tanked over the last few years, is pure folly.
– Candidates labeled “unelectable” by party elites and the punditry have won before.
While Clinton supporters lovecomparing Sanders’ candidacy to the unsuccessful campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, these comparisons don’t hold water. Electoral dynamics today are drastically different than they were in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
At least two presidential candidates in more recent history have been labeled “unelectable” and gone on to win. One was Ronald Reagan. The other, as alluded to earlier, was Barack Obama. That history isn’t proof that Sanders will follow suit, but it indicates that “expert” opinions about electability should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.
For all their talk about the importance of evidence-based electability arguments, Krugman and his fellow naysayers haven’t actually provided any. They rely instead on a dubious application of the psychological principle of loss aversion and a simplistic political categorization model, among other speculative arguments, each of which is unconvincing.
None of that’s to say that Sanders doesn’t still have a lot of work to do if he wants to win the Democratic nomination. Clinton, despite having a very bad record on racial justice, currently holds a big lead among non-White voters. Sanders will need to cut into that. Clinton’s lead is likely due more to voters’ unfamiliarity with Sanders than anything else, however, and as more non-White voters learn about him, Sanders’ popularity among those voters should continue to rise.
When it does, we’ll have a real primary election on our hands. And while I’d advise against putting too much stock in electability arguments, the candidate in that primary with the best record and policy platform – Bernie Sanders – also happens to be the Democrats’ best shot in November.
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