Bernie Sanders’s surge doesn’t mean the Democratic race is wide open. Here’s why
Bernie Sanders’s surge doesn’t mean the Democratic race is wide open. Here’s why
- September 17, 2015
- Washington Post op-ed by poli sci prof Michael Tesler puts Sanders’s push in the polls into perspective
New polling data from YouGov/CBS, which shows Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) now ahead
of Hillary Rodham Clinton by 22 percentage points in New Hampshire and 10 points in
Iowa, prompted a mini media frenzy earlier this week. These numbers were widely reported
in news outlets, often under such overhyped headlines The New York Post’s “Bernie
is Wiping the Floor with Hillary in Latest Polls,” Salon’s “Hillary is No Lock, Bernie
is No Fluke: The Democratic Race is Wide Open,” and Breitbart’s “Poll: Bernie Sanders
Surging, Hillary Clinton Cratering”
A simultaneous YouGov/CBS statewide survey of likely Democratic primary voters in
South Carolina was nowhere to be found in those eye-catching headlines, though. The
media paid much less attention to those numbers that showed Clinton ahead of Sanders
by 23 percentage points in the Palmetto State. Sanders’s Cinderella surge, after all,
is simply a better narrative than Goliath crushing David in South Carolina.
But the South Carolina poll results are probably more important for understanding
how the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination will play out next year.
Read on, courtesy of the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/17/bernie-sanderss-surge-doesnt-mean-the-democratic-race-is-wide-open-heres-why/
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