CNN: NH: Hillary and Sanders in a tight race

[Bull Moose Base]

It's much harder for Sanders to win the primary than the general. If he's a talented enough campaigner to snag the nomination away from Hillary, to say he can't beat the Republican nominee is delusional.

[Tender Branson]

2nd choice of Biden-voters (who gets 8% overall):

37% Clinton
21% Sanders
  8% Chafee
34% Undecided

There were 29 Biden voters who offered a 2nd choice.

Which means, if we exclude Biden from the poll and reallocate his supporters, the poll looks like this:

46% Clinton (+3)
37% Sanders (+2)
  2% O'Malley (nc)
  1% Webb (nc)
  1% Chafee (+1)
  2% Others
11% Undecided (+2)

http://cola.unh.edu/sites/cola.unh.edu/files/research_publications/primary2016_demprimary062515.pdf

[Eraserhead]

If 8% is tight, what's the accurate word for the Republican contest?

Compact?

[Mr. Morden]

Sanders leads among voters under age 35, as well as those who didn't vote in the 2008 or 2012 NH primaries.  He also leads with men and college graduates.

Men:

Sanders 42%
Clinton 32%
Biden 10%

Women:

Clinton 51%
Sanders 30%
Biden 7%

[Mehmentum]

It's much harder for Sanders to win the primary than the general. If he's a talented enough campaigner to snag the nomination away from Hillary, to say he can't beat the Republican nominee is delusional.

Fair enough.  That being said, I don't intend to make things easier for him.  He's going to need to prove himself before I can even think about supporting him.

I'd rather lose the GE with Bernie Sanders, a candidate who stands for something - rather than losing with the bloodless, deceiving liar and corporate enabler Hillary Clinton.

Sounds an awful lot like cutting off your nose to spite your face.  You go do that, meanwhile I'll actually try to win elections. 

[Tender Branson]

It's much harder for Sanders to win the primary than the general. If he's a talented enough campaigner to snag the nomination away from Hillary, to say he can't beat the Republican nominee is delusional.

Fair enough.  That being said, I don't intend to make things easier for him.  He's going to need to prove himself before I can even think about supporting him.

I'd rather lose the GE with Bernie Sanders, a candidate who stands for something - rather than losing with the bloodless, deceiving liar and corporate enabler Hillary Clinton.

Sounds an awful lot like cutting off your nose to spite your face.  You go do that, meanwhile I'll actually try to win elections. 

Winning elections alone does not matter though, if you give up all your principles. It seems you have no self-confidence if you believe that Sanders cannot win an election. People said the same about Obama and then he defeated her and won the GE twice. Please, just give a damn about what the GE polls say right now, because if Sanders can run a campaign like Obama's - then even a Social Democrat like him can be elected POTUS. The thing with Hillary is that she's terribly flawed and is likely to collapse towards the end of the GE campaign and lose in a landslide. With Sanders, you have the opportunity to re-create the Democratic waves of 2008 and 2012 and win the election. Hillary on the other hand is so terrible that she'll cause a record low turnout and hand the election to Bush or any other Republican, because progressive Democrats and especially Independents stay home in disgust ...

[HAnnA MArin County]

Polling in New Hampshire is very reliable.

[eric82oslo]

It's much harder for Sanders to win the primary than the general. If he's a talented enough campaigner to snag the nomination away from Hillary, to say he can't beat the Republican nominee is delusional.

Fair enough.  That being said, I don't intend to make things easier for him.  He's going to need to prove himself before I can even think about supporting him.

I'd rather lose the GE with Bernie Sanders, a candidate who stands for something - rather than losing with the bloodless, deceiving liar and corporate enabler Hillary Clinton.

Sounds an awful lot like cutting off your nose to spite your face.  You go do that, meanwhile I'll actually try to win elections. 

Winning elections alone does not matter though, if you give up all your principles. It seems you have no self-confidence if you believe that Sanders cannot win an election. People said the same about Obama and then he defeated her and won the GE twice.

Obama has one of the strongest charismas in the whole world. Sanders has hardly any charisma whatsoever. Sanders comes across as really angry all of the time and you can bet that turns a lot of people really off. Not just a little, but really, really, really off. Sanders would be really lucky just by winning 35% in a general election. Seriously.

[Tender Branson]

We'll see. To me, Hillary Clinton is just an unlikeable relic of the past and more and more people in the US are dumping her in favour of something fresh, even if it's an excentric 100-year old Socialist from Vermont. People are sick and tired of her and the dynasties in US politics and it's not like she can easily walk to her nomination.

[mds32]

Sanders can win NH, people know him and the NH-2 is the more Democratic of the two districts. If it becomes a district battle Sanders could run up the score in NH-2.
After NH I don't see Sanders winning elsewhere except Vermont, Maine, Alaska, and perhaps Washington State.

[Mehmentum]

It's much harder for Sanders to win the primary than the general. If he's a talented enough campaigner to snag the nomination away from Hillary, to say he can't beat the Republican nominee is delusional.

Fair enough.  That being said, I don't intend to make things easier for him.  He's going to need to prove himself before I can even think about supporting him.

I'd rather lose the GE with Bernie Sanders, a candidate who stands for something - rather than losing with the bloodless, deceiving liar and corporate enabler Hillary Clinton.

Sounds an awful lot like cutting off your nose to spite your face.  You go do that, meanwhile I'll actually try to win elections. 

Winning elections alone does not matter though, if you give up all your principles. It seems you have no self-confidence if you believe that Sanders cannot win an election. People said the same about Obama and then he defeated her and won the GE twice. Please, just give a damn about what the GE polls say right now, because if Sanders can run a campaign like Obama's - then even a Social Democrat like him can be elected POTUS. The thing with Hillary is that she's terribly flawed and is likely to collapse towards the end of the GE campaign and lose in a landslide. With Sanders, you have the opportunity to re-create the Democratic waves of 2008 and 2012 and win the election. Hillary on the other hand is so terrible that she'll cause a record low turnout and hand the election to Bush or any other Republican, because progressive Democrats and especially Independents stay home in disgust ...

I have plenty of self confidence.  I have confidence in liberal ideas and policies.  I have little confidence in Bernie Sanders.  Bernie Sanders is no Barack Obama.  Even if he was another Barack Obama, Obama's election was a once in a generation event.  No one will be able to replicate the magic of 2008, especially not Bernie Sanders.

Furthermore, do you really want to replicate the last 7 years of government?  Yeah, we won the general elections, but we got horribly defeated in the midterms.  We've lost control of both Houses of Congress and of most state governments. There is clearly a major flaw in the Obama strategy, and I for one am not interested in making the same mistakes all over again.

This article (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122062/obama-gap-case-study-electoral-failure) explains my concerns very well.

Yes, Obama is a strong candidate.  But the Democratic Party isn't a strong party.  Obama's impressive organization hasn't done us any good in the midterms, and likely won't do us any good once he leaves office.

Like it or not, we need to strengthen the Democratic Party, and can you really tell me that Bernie Sanders (who isn't even a Democrat) will work hard to strengthen the party apparatus?  Bernie Sanders is a complete outsider, and as an outsider he'll work apart from the party.  Even if he can win general elections (which I'm obviously not convinced he can), we'll be in the same boat we've always been in the midterms and in downballot races.

Yes, Clinton has flaws (though we seem to have a fundamental disagreement on their severity and nature).  Yes, she's an old-timer and has a lot of baggage, but that means she's a known quantity and therefore very unlikely to collapse last minute.  Yes, she a creature of the establishment, but that means she'll do everything she can to make the Democratic Party strong again.

[Maxwell]

I'm sure most don't know Bernie enjoys a good rape fantasy.
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/29/410606045/the-bernie-sanders-rape-fantasy-essay-explained



Hillary can just blast the pic of the old geezer with headlines about his memoirs right before the primary.

He was condemning that type of stuff in that essay, not condoning it.

'
That would require rabid Hillary supporters to understand context. Your expectations are unrealistically high.

[Skye]

Reminds me of IceSpear's sig.

[Beet]

It's true that many otherwise Democratic sympathizers dislike Hillary so much that they'd throw away the General Election just to stop her. Which there is nothing wrong with, as we're all entitled to our dispositions, myself included. But let's call a spade a spade.

Purity progressives won't accept Hillary purportedly because, although she voted with Bernie on 93% of all issues, and has gotten to his left on issues like immigration and gun control, she doesn't follow some unattainable dream of turning America into Scandinavia over the course of one campaign. The feminist implications of of a Democratic woman who has been known for championing women's rights for at least 20 years, and the actually attainable dream of a campaign around that, is not important to them.

Why should one be privileged over the other on the scale of progressivism? This is an impossible argument to make on a forum almost exclusively made up of white men. But the political spectrum that Bernie is a part of was created by white men, and has been manned by white men from the far right to the far left, since the French Revolution. It's more radical to transform our conception of what the political spectrum means to include a more whole set of concerns than to simply move along it. Gender justice must be a core component of the political spectrum, and on that score Hillary is to Bernie's left. The reasons why, besides just her gender, should be quite obvious.

[Yelnoc]

I wonder how they fare without Biden's numbers.

Probably better for Hillary. I assume Biden voters are establishment-flavored, especially since Joe himself was never exactly a fire-breathing liberal.

Honestly, Biden's "support" is probably mostly youngs who aren't following the race but are choosing him on the basis of Onion Biden. Probably the kind of demographic that will break for Sanders in polls once his name recognition climbs and Biden stops being included in polls, but not the kind of demographic that's going to bother showing up to vote in primaries.

[Bull Moose Base]

I know plenty of women who prefer Bernie to Hillary, and half the Democratic women in this poll did not pick her as their choice. I also have every expectation Sanders would pick a female running mate, probably Warren. And of course, he has been more liberal than Hillary on most social issues for longer.

Both Hillary and Sanders would be mired in gridlock as president but Sanders would likely be a more reliable defender of programs that benefit the lower and middle classes and I actually think Sanders would do more to boost turnout in midterms since he has more appeal to disaffected voters who have given up on the process.

I still don't actually think he'll win the primary but if he does, electability is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Again, if Sanders is a good enough messenger to erase Hillary's massive lead, there's no reason to fear him taking on Jeb Bush. And conversely, if Hillary blows a primary where she was massively popular and leading by 50 points, you're not missing anything in the general.

[Beet]

Of course, women are human beings with multiple 'identities', and they're not going to support Hillary in the face of overwhelming pressure not to do so. Given the hurricane of negative media coverage Hillary has gotten as well as the overwhelmingly pro-Sanders social media environment (yes, yes, I know, Ron Paul yada yada, but one day little Johnny will grow up, and the Internet really is growing up) I think Democratic women's (and men's) support levels of Hillary are astounding. It's worth noting that the full extent of black support for Obama didn't emerge until after he won the Iowa caucus. But in this poll even, Bernie has a 10-point lead among men and Hillary has a 21-point lead among women. That's pretty big.

So far, polling seems to show that more disaffected voters prefer Hillary. Places where people are highly engaged in politics (such as Daily Kos) are heavily pro-Bernie, and people like these are the core of his support. The reality is, both Sanders and Hillary are pragmatic Democrats and both are more economically leftist than Obama, but neither one would be much different than Obama in the face of the present Congress.

When Obama beat Hillary in '08, you could have argued that it was because he was such an amazing candidate that he beat another heavily favored candidate. But if Sanders beats her in '16, the narrative will be about how Hillary was never as strong a candidate as she was made out to be. One upset, and it's about the upsetter. Two upsets of the same person, and it's about the upsettee. In that case, the reason for a second Hillary defeat would not be that Bernie was such a great candidate, but the refusal to see a woman who could lead a feminist campaign as a revolutionary event that would upset the status quo.

[Penelope]

Clinton seems to be on track for a Al Gore '00 performance in the Democratic primaries.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I wonder how they fare without Biden's numbers.

Probably better for Hillary. I assume Biden voters are establishment-flavored, especially since Joe himself was never exactly a fire-breathing liberal.

Honestly, Biden's "support" is probably mostly youngs who aren't following the race but are choosing him on the basis of Onion Biden. Probably the kind of demographic that will break for Sanders in polls once his name recognition climbs and Biden stops being included in polls, but not the kind of demographic that's going to bother showing up to vote in primaries.

lolwut

[Ebsy]

Excellent. Go Bernie !

Kind of depressing that 1/3 of New Hampshire Democrats are willing to throw away their chance at the presidency just so they can have an ideologically pure candidate.

I'd rather lose the GE with Bernie Sanders, a candidate who stands for something - rather than losing with the bloodless, deceiving liar and corporate enabler Hillary Clinton.

I'd rather win.

[Lief 🗽]

Excellent. Go Bernie !

Kind of depressing that 1/3 of New Hampshire Democrats are willing to throw away their chance at the presidency just so they can have an ideologically pure candidate.

I'd rather lose the GE with Bernie Sanders, a candidate who stands for something - rather than losing with the bloodless, deceiving liar and corporate enabler Hillary Clinton.

Well thank god you vote in Austria and not America then. Any "progressive" who would prefer Scott Walker to Hillary Clinton needs to really question whether they're actually progressive.

Also your hatred of Clinton is very creepy and I would probably try and see a therapist about it if I were you.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Sanders, if he wins NH should be considered a top tier candidate. And should focus on NV, not SC.

[Eraserhead]

Reminds me of IceSpear's sig.

Just needs John Williams' score from Jaws.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Women:

Clinton 51%
Sanders 30%
Biden 7%

Why are womynz so stupid? Stop toeing the party line She(ep)-males. Hillary is not the road to empowerment.

#BernBabyBern

[Badger]

It's much harder for Sanders to win the primary than the general. If he's a talented enough campaigner to snag the nomination away from Hillary, to say he can't beat the Republican nominee is delusional.

No.)