1 In 10 Sanders Primary Voters Ended Up Supporting Trump, Survey Finds

[Shadows]

The WV/KY number is stupid. Sanders had 13M primary voters. WV/KY made a very small fraction of it & would little influence on the overall number. The sample size of WV/KY voters will be quite small.

See here is the deal. What % of Hillary voters voted for McCain in 2008? According to most polls, McCain got 10%+ of the Democratic votes in 2008, a number higher than what Trump got. Most of them were Hillary primary voters (rather than Obama voters).

Hillary to McCain was likely a higher number than the 10%. 10% is a pretty low number & is also testament to the effort of Bernie as well. And stop the with the KY/WV BS.

[Shadows]

I thought it would be worse, and it probably would be if Bernie-backers who stayed home were counted in this survey.  So many Republicans who weren't happy about Trump held their noses and voted for him anyway, but too many Bernie bros couldn't do the same for Clinton.

There is something that Democrats need to learn from Republicans: Party unity.

34% of Kasich voters apparently went to Hillary, try again.

So?  What percentage of the Republican electorate consisted of Kasich voters?

Actually,
I  believe that it was the independents that decided the election and many of those who voted in open primaries did vote for Sanders.
Some voted for Kasich, but not as many as those who voted for Sanders. At least that would be my guess.

That is true. Of the small Bernie/Trump voters, most of them weren't even Democrats. Most young people are also Independents.

So this party unity is BS because they were never part of the party !

[Shadows]

So, I have been trying to wrap my head around this one since it many ways although it doesn't make sense intuitively, there are definitely overlaps in terms of many rural counties throughout the US that heavily backed Bernie in the Dem primaries, and also areas where there were significant swings towards Trump.

Granted, in many cases Trump appears to have captured very few of Obama '12 voters, and in the vast majority of situations the defection to 3rd Party Candidates among Obama '12 voters appears to be a much more significant factor than Obama '12 / Trump '16 voters.

Still, having a good friend of some 15 years who was a Nader/Kerry/Obama/Romney/Trump GE Pres voter, who changed his registration from Independent to Democrat in order to vote for Bernie in the '16 primaries, this study and overall discussion is actually of significant interest.

So, I started running a few numbers and generated a spreadsheet to explore the topic, set any assumptions and personal opinions at the door to see if the actual raw data supports the claim of a small number of Ivory Tower Political Scientists that made a dramatic claim.

Ok.... here are the numbers for every single 2016 Democratic Primary by State.

I omitted the Washington State beauty pageant Primary, although honestly that likely if anything would have decreased the potential % of Sanders>Trump crossover voters.

I used a more conservative 10% number rather than the 12% number posted in the study cited above, since generally when analyzing data it is best to under-state rather than overstate...



Ok--- so we are reverse engineering the study using actual election results versus their polling methodology... So all caucus states are omitted, since these are not Primary States, and additionally they don't represent the will of the voters, considering the extremely small number of Party activists that participate in these events.

Let's start with the top-line number....

Based upon my calculations, Bernie bagged 11.668k voters Nationally in Primary States.

Let's look at the Raw Vote total of Bernie Primary voters by State...



Let's look at the data from another perspective to see the distribution of Bernie Primary voters,  so we can understand exactly where his core National distribution of support was by State...



Ok--- so what really stands out here is the concentration of Bernie supporters in the "Industrial States" of the Upper Midwest. Almost 25% of Bernie Primary voters were located in five Primary States (WI/MI/IL/IN/OH). 18% were in Western/Mountain West States heavily dominated by CA and OR (15% of National Bernie Vote Share by Region). 9.2% New England. 18.4% NY/Central Atlantic. 28.5% States of the Old Confederacy (Including WV).

So logically, if Trump were to have captured 10% of people that voted for Bernie in the Primaries, he would have received 1.17k voters distributed throughout the United States from Bernie '16 > Trump '16 voters.

Let's do a peanut butter spread and assume that this 10% of Bernie voters were evenly distributed across every single '16 Dem Primary State.

I know what they say about assumptions, but hell how can we test the theory without first isolating variations outside of the norm from the data-set?



So what stands out here?

Obviously we have states like California, Illinois, Oregon, and Massachusetts where Clinton actually gained ground on Trump, despite Democratic defection to 3rd Party candidates.

If Trump had gained 10% of Bernie voters in the GE, most likely he captured less than the numbers above, meaning the votes would need to be made up elsewhere to meet the 10% number cited in the Study in order to hit the 1.7 Million Bernie/Trump voters allegedly out there...

Where would these places exist?

So next step is to look at the overall Bernie share of the vote by State. Meaning we take his 2016 GE primary numbers and simply divide it by the total votes by State for US Pres in the GE.





So basically it looks like Bernie Sanders primary voters accounted for an average of 10% of the 2016 GE voters!!!!

So, if we look at the % of Bernie GE voters by State we see the following:

1.) Vermont-               36.8%
2.) New Hampshire-    20.4%
3.) Wisconsin-            19.1%
4.) Massachusetts-      17.6%
5.) Illinois-                  17.6%
6.) West Virginia          17.2%
7.) Oregon-                 16.0%
8.) Rhode Island-         14.4%
9.) New Mexico-           13.0%
10.) Montana               12.6%

Runner ups would be Michigan, Indiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky to round out the #11-15 slots, although MO/CA/MD/NY were above the average Bernie vote as a % of the Ntl vote for Dem primary states...

Wow--- what a weird Icelandic smorgasbord of States....

So obviously we see a high concentration of Bernie primary votes in high turnout states with more accessible ballot access laws that translates into raw numbers come GE time, compared with States where ballot access is much more difficult...

Let's look at it from another angle.... to what extent was the Clinton coalition dependent upon Bernie Sanders Primary voters?

Simple math we take the total number of Bernie votes by State in the '16 Primaries and then divide it by the '16 HRC GE numbers....



This is pretty fascinating, since it helps isolate the variables and look at the overall impact of the Sanders movement compared to the actual results of the Dem GE candidate....

Top Ten States in terms of Sanders Primary / Clinton Vote Share:

1.) West Virginia-     65.6% Sanders
2.) Vermont-            64.9% Sanders
3.) New Hampshire-  43.5% Sanders
4.) Oklahoma-          41.4% Sanders
5.) Wisconsin-          41.1% Sanders
6.) Montana-            35.5% Sanders
7.) Kentucky-           33.5% Sanders
8.) Indiana-             32.5% Sanders
9.) Oregon-              32.0% Sanders
10.) Illinois-             31.8% Sanders
11.) Massachusetts-  29.4% Sanders
12.) Missourri-          28.9% Sanders
13.) New Mexico-      27.0% Sanders
14.) Rhode Island      26.4% Sanders
15.) Michigan-           26.2% Sanders

So what does this show us? It helps isolate the Bernie Primary vote by State to see where there might have been the highest levels of Sanders > Trump crossover voters....

Definitely if we look at some of the States on the list it is crystal clear that there were a significant number of Sanders/Trump voters with WV, NH, OK, WI, MT, KY, IN jumping out especially when looking at the '12>'16 Obama swings.

Still I am skeptical on the 10-12% claim at a national level, since simply when we start adding up the numbers, I am hard pressed to come up with the math of where exactly the 1.2 Million voters (10% number) that voted for Bernie in the Dem Primaries and then Trump in the GE came from.

Quite frankly, there is a strong correlation between 3rd Party voting and Bernie support in many places than Bernie>Trump voters.

My next thought is to focus on a few key states where it is most likely that there may have been a significant concentration of Bernie/Trump voters such as WI/MI/NH/MO and possibly PA.

Thoughts???

Pretty cool. I am not sure how accurate it is but I like the maps & effort that you put in.

[Shadows]

iirc more Clintonites defected to McCain in '08, more Obama-Clinton voters went Trump as opposed to Berners who defected. Most who did defect (and some who didn't; among Berners) were Republicans/Indy before the primaries.

Sure, I believe you are likely correct on these fundamental points, so thanks for keeping us in perspective.

Additionally, I'm not actually convinced at this point that 10-12% of Bernie Dem Primary voters supported Trump in the GE, which didn't intuitively make sense, especially when looking at where the largest concentrations of Bernie Primary voters resided.

Did 88-90% of Bernie Sanders Primary voters support Clinton?

Absolutely not.... in fact, I might suggest (Although it will take a bit of additional time and effort to examine the numbers) that defections among Bernie '16 Primary voters were higher to 3rd Party Candidates (Depending on ballot access in the '16 GE by State) than Bernie/Trump cross-over votes.

Sure we can point to WV/KY/OK, and there appears to be a strong correlation of Bernie>Trump cross-overs. Still these three States account for only 4.4% of Bernie '16 Primary Voters.

Now, if we look at some of the other states that swung heavily towards Trump where there was a significant Bernie "GE Vote Share" and "Bernie Primary / Clinton GE Raw Votes" in two places NH and WI.

These were both extremely close states in the '16 GE, and most likely Trump did capture somewhere around 10% of the Bernie Primary Vote share, so in my mind would be Ground Zero to look at County level numbers...

The Bernie/Trump votes which is likely much less than Hillary/McCain votes is probably not 10%. It could be higher than 10% in states like WI or MI but not on the whole. You are right there were a lot of Sanders/Stein & Sanders/Johnson voters although both well hugely after Sanders campaigned hard for Clinton. Some of the Sanders/Johnson voters were libertarians who voted Sanders because there was no strong libertarian candidate after Super Tuesday.

WV/KY/OK is a small part, 3-4-5% of the overall numbers. Even if it was 25/30% here, the small size would mean it would not have a major impact.

I think what makes it difficult to estimate is the turnout numbers. Primary turnouts are a lot less & it varies from state to state. One of the reasons could also be some primary voters staying home/not voting at the Presidential level. That can also swing states as the pie falls & Trump's core voters are very enthused.



@ Ignoring the David Brock Super pac paid troll.