There’s already a spin war going on over what last night’s results means for Biden’s or Sanders’ strength in November with more or less meaningless claims like: “Biden won all the red states. But it’s of no use as he’ll lose them in November.”
Off course he will — so would Sanders. Just like both of them will end up winning the blue states, no matter what.
A little more telling is perhaps that Biden also won most of the swing states (here states that have at least a chance of going to either party in November): North Carolina, Minnesota and Texas with Maine being a draw.
But in reality I think this is an oversimplification to try to extrapolate primary victories into the candidate winning or losing the states in November. The results, however does tell something about which demographic groups the two candidates have their strengths with, and that might be interesting to have a look at.
First a disclaimer: Not being American or even living in America I only very indirectly have a horse in this race. American elections are irritatingly consequential for us here in Europe though, and as a reporter I have an interest in and follow American politics quite closely.
In a place like DK I am not a reporter though and I don’t pretend to be neutral. In the Biden/Sanders horse race my take is basically that Biden is a pretty poor candiate — and that Sanders is a lousy one.
This is however not really the purpose of this diary. So if it comes off as more friendly to Biden than to Sanders it is more due to the fact that Biden won, and he did it so vastly overperforming both expectations and previous results (sans South Carolina), while Sanders had a relatively poor, though not disastrous night.
And with those remarks on to my main take aways:
- Biden did better than expected in nearly all states. He not only won the southern states, but several of them he won in a blow out. He won in states where few saw it coming like Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas, and even in California his loss was more limited than feared.
- Likewise Sanders underperformed, getting a smaller vote share across the board than he did in 2016, even in the places where the race has effectively shaped up to be a two horse race.
- Biden not only did well with black voters. This was expected, but he did extremely well, and not only in the south. Also in a progressive big city environment like Boston did African American voters come out for Biden in droves.
- Biden also did well with the segment of suburban, often well educated voters that has drifted towards the Democrats in the Trump era. Up until a few days ago these had been Buttigieg’s and Warren’s voters, but even with her still in the race, they shifted almost unanimously towards him. With Buttigieg’s voters this is not a surprise, but that so many of Warren’s voters are jumping ship for Biden and not for Bernie as the race coalesce around the two front runners is somewhat surprising. Together with the inner city black vote, it was his strength in the Boston suburbs, that carried him to his unexpected win in Massachusetts, and that without really campaigning in the state to boot.
- He was also able to secure Klobuchars vote in the one place where she really mattered: Minnesota.
- This means that Biden over the last few days has broadened his appeal from having his main strength with working class and lower educated voters to appeling broadly across income and educational groups. This is significant.
- He also seems to have done well with rural voters — the few of them that votes in a Democratic primary that is.
- Sanders for his part consolidated the grip he has on latinx voters and demonstrated that this was no fluke. This marks his only real broadening of his coalition since 2016, but it is an important one.
- The age gap persists. Young voters go for Sanders, older voters for Biden.
- However Sanders was NOT able to translate his support among young voters to a meaningful surge in turn out with the group.
- On the other hand Biden WAS able to get both old and new supporters to turn out for him, at least in some states, like Virginia, where many more seemed keen to come out and vote for him than did for Hillary four years ago.
For the further primaries this means:
- Even if Biden is not the type of candidate that inspires a lot of passion, a lot of voters seem to like him enough to be able to be persuaded to vote for him and actually turn up on primary day.
- There is a very real anti-Sanders vote out there, and it was only a question of who they would coalesce around. Even with relatively left leaning voters, who have until now been Warren supporters.
- Unless Sanders finds a way to grow his base that he has until now not demonstrated, he is toast in a two way race.
- Party backing matters, even if the DNC seems to (wisely) have backed away from the shenanigans they did on Hillary Clinton’s behalf in 2016. Clyburn’s endorsement is without doubt the most important of the whole cycle and Buttigieg’s and Klobuchar’s mattered too. And just let me state that this is not in any way dodgy, just like AOC’s endorsement of Sanders, which gave him a major boost at the time, was not either. Biden will just have a lot more of them and given that Sanders has spent half a life crapping on the party establishment, this is hardly a surprise. The surprise to at least some of Sander’s supporters is that there is actually a substantial segment of the Democratic electorate, who are willing to listen to them.
Even more interesting is to have a look at what these patterns mean for either of them, if they become the nominee. Though I do think state primary results are more or less meaningless as directly translateable, their respective strengths and weaknesses with different demographic groups might say something about their possibilities and problems in the general election.
- Biden seems to be able to motivate black voters to a greater extent than Clinton was and might get closer to Barack Obama-level turn out with the group. Their somewhat lower turn out was a main reason for her under-performance in crucial swing states like Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan. A boost in black turn out will also have positive effects for Biden in Georgia and to a lesser extent in Texas.
- On the contrary Sanders might have to work harder to get the last black voters to show up in November — or maybe not, given their hate of Trump, but at least it seems less sure.
- The situation with latinx voters is reverse. This means that Sanders might be a stronger nominee in Arizona and possibly Texas. Not unimportant. Other latin heavy states like California, Colorado or New Mexico, he might win with a bigger margin than Biden, but they will probably both win them, so it doesn’t matter much.
- The exeption is Florida, given the make up of the latinx community here, with many Cubans, who even amongst the Democratic leaning ones of them might have problems with Sander’s affinity for the Castro regime, and many Puerto Ricans, who might vote “like latinos” or might vote more “like blacks”.
- Biden has a much stronger appeal to moderate, suburban voters including voters that are new to the Democratic party. Sanders might make a crucial few of them go back to Trump or stay home. Again, the anti-Sanders vote seems to be real. This is especially important in states with large urban centres like North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
- Biden has a real problem with younger voters. Sanders has a real problem with older voters. Both of them will probably lose turnout in these segments respectively. On one hand the older voters are more stable, so the drop will probably be smaller, but on the other hand there are many more of them. And a 1% drop in turnout with age groups that equals 30% of the electorate is more significant than a 2 % drop in a group that normally equals 10% (placeholder numbers, but we are in that ball park)
- Exacerbating that problem is that while some of the Sanders voters, that can’t stomach Biden (or any other candidate really) might stay home or vote third party, only a few will probably shift to Trump. With Biden voters that are strongly anti-Sanders there is a higher probability that more of them will show up to vote for Trump, and thus are not only a vote lost for Democrats, but a vote gained for the Republicans.
- Combined with Sanders not really seeming to be able to translate his passionate backing with younger voters to a turnout boost, this could be crucial, especially in states that already skew older: Florida, Arizona, most of the Mid West and Maine.
- Both candidates have an appeal to white working class voters, and probably more so than Clinton did. This is really, really important in the Mid West states where exactly that group lost her the election last time (together with lower black turn out and third party voting). But which ones of them will have the largest effect on that group is not really possible to say from the primary results.
So overall my take is that the primary results show that both candidates actually have shown strengths in areas, that are needed to win in November. And both of them have shown weaknesses too.
But in the end Sanders’ shortcomings are more severe than Biden’s. Especially his lack of ability to appeal to new voter groups and expand his base bodes ill for a general election campaign.
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Edit:
It came to my mind, that I ignored one important aspect: Bidens strength with late deciders, which he won across the board and the very forceful and swift movement towards him in the last days before Super Tuesday.
This on one hand tells us that Biden’s support might be softer than Sanders’. A late decider is rarely a passionate supporter, and that might have concequences for turn out on election day.
On the other hand it can also be read as a symptom of the passionate wish of many Democrats to beat Donald Trump, and that events in the last week has convinced them, that the best of the available bets for that is Joe Biden. And that is not a sign of weakness, just a different sort of motivation.
And finally a short remark on Elisabeth Warren and Mike Bloomberg, whom I have totally ignored. This is simply due to the fact that I don’t see any of them with any chance of winning the nomination any more (save for the unlikely possibility that Warren is chosen as a compromise candidate at a brokered convention, but even then her results yesterday is not really of any use as an analysis of her strength as a general election candidate)
