A number of hypotheses...and one obvious answer
Here’s a hypothesis put forth by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas:
Sanders's high level of support around here is noteworthy. Daily Kos represents the activist base, and that activist base appreciates everything Sanders has stood for throughout his career.
That sounds reasonable.
He posted that in his poll analysis diary when Bernie Sanders received about 3 times as many votes as Hillary Clinton in the first Daily Kos Straw Poll of the 2016 cycle.
Three polls ago, Sanders’s numbers were also about 3 times that of the next highest candidate, and in the last two polls, Sanders’s numbers were about twice that of the next highest candidate. Ever since he announced his candidacy this cycle, Sanders has won every Daily Kos Straw Poll handily.
(Overall interest in the poll, however, seems to be waning. Three polls ago the overall vote count was 52,000; then it dropped to about 40,000; then to about 35,000 in yesterday’s poll. So over the course of one month, participation in the Straw Poll has dropped 33%, despite the polling window remaining constant, from 2PM—8PM. Pete Buttigieg’s raw numbers rose meteorically two weeks ago [+3911], putting him in second place, but yesterday’s rise for Buttigieg was much less dramatic [+441]. That could mean Buttigieg’s numbers are peaking, but it could also simply reflect the Straw Poll’s own flagging participation rate. It would seem that one simple thing Markos could do to increase participation would be to change the polling window back to 24 hours.)
A couple weeks after he wrote the above post last cycle, Markos suggested another reason for Sanders’s robust lead in his poll: people voting in the Daily Kos straw poll are unrepresentative:
[G]iven that this community is predominantly whiter, more male, and generally younger than the party base at large, Sanders' high level of support makes perfect sense. (We're now at 79 percent white, a record low, but still much higher than the Democratic Party's 60 percent).
I would have thought that Daily Kos’s readership skews older, not younger, but at any rate, what strikes me about that statement is that Markos has also asserted that the Daily Kos community represents “the most informed and engaged activists.”
Those two ideas — that the Daily Kos readership skews white and male, and that they are also “the most informed and engaged activists” — seem to me at odds with each other. Indeed, Markos has argued strenuously that women and people of color are the driving force in the Democratic Party, not white males:
The energy in the party is certainly coming from those groups. Most of the new Resistance groups are run by women, #BlackLivesMatter and the #MeToo movements have become cultural phenomenons.
Keeping that it mind, consider recent scientific polling regarding how Bernie Sanders fares among these demographics. Vox:
An analysis of recent polls from November of 2018 to March 2019 shows Sanders is more popular with people of color than white people, and women like Sanders as much as men do, if not more.
So it almost feels like we have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new hypothesis!
Or maybe not. This seems to me to be the obvious answer:
Bernie Sanders’s good numbers in the DK Straw Poll simply represent the enthusiasm of the thousands of folks who’ve flocked to the poll to show their support. (And that’s also why Pete Buttigieg surged to second place: his supporters have showed up to vote.)
As Markos said when Sanders jumped to first place in the Straw Poll after tossing his hat in the ring this cycle:
The Straw Poll measures the intensity of online support, and there’s nothing stopping supporters of other campaigns from doing the same.
(Of course, by “online support” we have to read that as folks who are online and are aware of this poll — I would assume the vast majority of potential Primary voters who spend time on the Internet are not aware of this poll.)
Technological issues...and the best advice from Markos about his straw poll
There’s been a fair amount of discussion about the technological ways to mitigate against anyone who tries to vote more than once, since Markos announced that his software has that capability. He also announced enhancements to mitigate against bots, etc.:
[Requiring email is] one of a series of measures we’re putting in place—many behind the scenes—to protect the integrity of the straw poll, while also helping build our list, one that does amazing activism work. We’re not worried about campaigns or supporters spamming the straw poll—I like that this thing, unscientific as it is, measures online support intensity. We’re more worried about bots and Russians and malicious actors (like this one). Requiring an email address is not a prophylactic, but it does assist with countermeasures.
Finally, have fun with this. Rejoice at all the great candidates we already have in the field, and the many more that will soon join.
I think Markos’s advice is sound: ”Have fun with this. Rejoice at all the great candidates.”
If your favorite candidate does well in this poll, it’s a sign of enthusiasm that you can rightly take a little pride in. If your favorite candidate doesn’t do well, don’t take the results too seriously — Clinton in 2016 obviously did much better in the primaries than she did in any of Daily Kos’s early straw polls!
By the same token, Sanders in 2016 of course did much better in the primaries than he did in the early scientific polls — so don’t take scientific polls too seriously either. “Good” polls can make supporters overconfident and “bad” polls can sour supporters’ confidence. Neither of those things will help your favorite candidate.
Feet on the ground, eyes on the prize. That’s how to win elections.