Decades of evidence from academic studies suggests that more moderate nominees tend to perform better in general elections than more ideologically extreme nominees. But early polling testing how Democratic nominees would fare against Trump suggests a different conclusion: Bernie Sanders, the most left-wing candidate in the Democratic primary, polls as well against Trump as his more moderate competitors in surveys. Democratic voters have appeared to take these polls to heart, as a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that Democrats believe Sanders has the best chance of beating Trump.
Why does Sanders look similarly electable to leading moderates in polls against Trump? We fielded a 40,person survey in early that helps us look into this question with more precision. So that respondents would not strategically claim to only support their chosen candidate against Trump, we only asked each respondent about one Democratic candidate. The surveys were fielded by Lucid, an online market research company that provides nationally representative samples of Americans.
Our data laid out in an academic working paper here also found what polls show: that Sanders is similarly electable to more moderate candidates. But, on closer inspection, it shows that this finding relies on some remarkable assumptions about youth turnout that past elections suggest are questionable.
We found that nominating Sanders would drive many Americans who would otherwise vote for a moderate Democrat to vote for Trump, especially otherwise Trump-skeptical Republicans.
Republicans are more likely to say they would vote for Trump if Sanders is nominated: Approximately 2 percent of Republicans choose Trump over Sanders but desert Trump when we pit him against a more moderate Democrat like Buttigieg, Biden, or Bloomberg. Democrats and independents are also slightly more likely to say they would vote for Trump if Sanders is nominated.
Swing voters may be rare — but their choices between candidates often determine elections , and many appear to favor Trump over Sanders but not over other Democrats. Despite losing these voters to Trump, Sanders appears in our survey data to be similarly electable to the moderates, at least at first blush. Mainly because 11 percent of left-leaning young people say they are undecided, would support a third-party candidate, or, most often, just would not vote if a moderate were nominated — but say they would turn out and vote for Sanders if he were nominated.
The large number of young people who say they will only vote if Sanders is nominated is just enough to offset the voters Sanders loses to Trump in the rest of the electorate.
Warren appears to lose at least as many Republicans as Sanders but does not seem to benefit from any compensating enthusiasm from young voters. They picture an army of leftists who refuse to vote currently because they are disgusted with corporate influence over American life, including overly conservative Democratic candidates. Democrats often hope that young people, who lean Democratic , will finally overcome their habit of nonvoting. But even in the high-turnout midterm elections of , people under 30 voted at much lower rates than people over In the recent Texas Democratic primary, Sanders won most Latino American voters under 30, but older Latino Americans, who favored Biden, turned out in larger numbers.
For example: The Democratic Party has outlawed winner-take-all nominating events. That means a candidate who is ahead in the delegate count midway through the nominating season will be hard to beat later.
But electability in Democratic primaries is not the same as electability in November. A lot of this comes from experimental studies — contrived situations where researchers present participants with information about hypothetical candidates and ask them questions about how likeable that imaginary person is, or how much leadership ability they assume the candidate would possess. Across the board, participants preferred to vote for the candidate with the lower-pitched voice, regardless of if that candidate was male or female.
And the effect was clearer for participants over 40 — you know, the people most likely to turn out to vote. The people who did this study of voice pitch later went back and analyzed whether the voice pitch of sitting members of Congress correlated with their legislative activity, the holding of leadership positions or their influence in setting legislative priorities. Lo and behold, having a deeper voice does not make you a better politician.
Voters just apparently sorta think it does. Studies like this run somewhat counter to actual electoral outcomes, though, said Cindy Kam, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. Yes, studies suggest that voters hold female candidates to higher standards than their male counterparts — women who get elected to public office tend to be more qualified for the jobs they hold than men who get elected, for example.
And women are significantly underrepresented in public office. Racial bias, on the other hand, more clearly factors into outcomes of who actually wins elections, Kam and other experts said. Studies have found that white voters see black and Latino candidates as more ideologically extreme and less competent. And black women still rely on the black electorate to win their races.
Instead, Obama got He won the presidency, but with lower enthusiasm and turnout among whites than a similar white candidate would likely have had, Kam said. We take those ingredients and we make assumptions about that person. We make assumptions about what other people might think about that person.
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