I was reading about how in some states, the Sanders campaign workers are having a pretty difficult time with it: students have to go to some office that’s a 40 minute bus ride away, and then basically lie (because “I’ll be out of town for spring break” is not one of the allowed reasons for an absentee ballot). I know when I was in college, I never went to the beach or anything like that, but I did go home to visit my parents and younger sister for the week–the dorms weren’t even open except for a special wing where some international students lived.
You don’t have to change your voter registration to your college town, I suspect a lot of college students have never registered, or if they have they registered where their parents lived. So if they go home, they should be able to vote.
There are ~20m college students, and about ~12m are the ones we’re talking about with spring break etc (the other 8m are over age 25, so are nontraditional students who are probably going to a community college or nearby college in between work and raising a family and thus don’t get a spring break that would affect their voting.) If your campaign strategy hinges on the vacation habits of 12m people in a country of 320m then I’d argue things are pretty grim.
In any case, South Carolina has shown me a few things:
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Bernie cannot meaningfully improve his standing with blacks, he does not know how to campaign to this community and has done zero work to establish the sort of interpersonal relationships with this community that matter. Black celebrities aren’t the key to the black community, local politicians, local religious leaders, local community leaders are the keys to this community. Black communities have always been campaigned to through these important figures and that hasn’t changed. Blacks aren’t monolithic but politics has to treat people in the aggregate, and what I’m saying applies to a large swathe of the black electorate.
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No campaign can win if it’s dependent on the under 30 vote. This has been proven many times in politics, and it’s being proven right now as they fail to come out for Bernie.
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It looks like when they know they will lose, many Sanders voters stay home. This suggests they do not understand it’s a proportional race, so votes matter in every state, not just the ones that Bernie might win. If this kind of thinking comes into play on Super Tuesday he could be looking at a 200+ delegate disadvantage to Clinton.
Given these developments, while I’ve previously avoided saying this–as of right now I think there is functionally not a path to the nomination for Sanders. Clinton will be the nominee, and Bernie is forked.
Now I’m thinking about the link I previously posted claiming that current polls show Trump would blow out Hillary, and vice versa against Sanders. Now I’m thinking, if that’s the case, how can Hillary win the nomination? I mean, I KNOW there are all sorts of factors involved, but I can’t see how you can simultaneously argue that Sanders is the clear and prohibitive voters’ choice in a general by a huge margin without saying he’s a shoe in to win the nomination to start with without a lot of heavy wriggling.
Because of what a certain segment here on the SDMB doesn’t want to believe–those general election polls mean absolutely nothing. People don’t think about “potential candidates” the same way they do actual candidates. Right now Sanders is just a angry old guy from Vermont who is giving hell to the establishment, isn’t in the pocket of special interests, and who is standing up to the “system.” Enough people in the broader electorate (outside of those who vote in the Democratic primary) feel vaguely positive about that. But the people actually voting in the Democratic primaries have greater information, because their states have been bombarded with appearances and TV advertisements, and as actual primary voters they are generally more familiar with the issues than the “likely voters in a general election” (general election turnout is like 4-5x as high as primary turnout.)
The most realistic prediction was always that when the “information gap” between primary voters and general election voters was “closed” on Sanders, by him becoming the Democratic nominee, he would become as weak as he is in the actual primaries (where he is getting destroyed, and where he will lose to Hillary when all is said and done.)
So it’s the actual results in the primaries that reflect Sanders real broad electability, not these largely meaningless general election hypothetical polls.
I rarely toot my own horn (beep beep), but then again I am rarely prescient; and I think I called this one pretty well if I say so myself:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19110776&postcount=17
Leaper, those “trial heat” polls are worthless. Professors of political science say so. The noted expert Nate Silver says so. Just not worth the “paper they are printed on” (what do we say now?).
Martin Hyde, very solid observations. I’m almost wondering now if those black celebrities backing Bernie are feeling sort of weird about the whole thing. Kind of like a 20 year old white dude who’s hardcore for Hillary, mustn’t they be feeling they aren’t really vibing with their peeps at this point? I once had a friend who was African American, and she really liked Pink Floyd. I thought it was cool because I like them too, but she chuckled about how every black person she knew thought she was really weird. I wonder if this is going to be like that now, a little bit.
You said “It looks like when they know they will lose, many Sanders voters stay home. This suggests they do not understand it’s a proportional race, so votes matter in every state, not just the ones that Bernie might win.” I’m not sure it’s a lack of understanding, necessarily. I think it goes deeper, more primal, than that. People don’t like to be involved with a badly losing effort. Even in winner-take-all scenarios, people voting on the winning side are still happy to come out, despite the fact that in game-theoretical terms, they could just as easily see their vote as pointless, “overkill”. But people like to pile on; they don’t like to be piled on. I think this is accentuated for the young. Being part of a big, happy, winning mass is what feels good, you know? (My son is *really *down right now, poor kid.)
If I’m right, it is actually an even deeper problem for the Sanders campaign than what you are describing, as it might not necessarily matter whether any given state is competitive for him or not. It may just be a general deflating, “the party’s over”, including fundraising. We’ll see.
Before I’d believe this argument - which I’m not expecting you’re making - I’d want a breakdown of spring break timing and states. I’d also want to know which states and their absentee systems. I know back in Ohio it’s early voting and absentee on demand, pretty much.
Frankly, anyone seriously making the ‘spring break’ argument would remind me of excuse-making in advance. Someone who expects to lose and is trying to put a brave face on it.
I hadn’t seen that post or that thread, but that’s spot on.
I’ve noticed the (generally white affluent southern) Bernie supporters I know becoming less enthusiastic lately, so I’m not super surprised his support even amongst whites dropped in the last few weeks. I think Bernie is just running into the same thing that other, similar candidates have, as the election gets closer and people think about it more, they start moving towards the less idealistic, more transactional politicians.
Hey, I don’t think anyone would mistake me for a Bernhead! But I read about this somewhere (probably the NY Times?) and it struck me as legit. ::shrug::
You did! I’m too lazy to dig up examples, but I think it’s fair to say I did as well. Not quite the scale of it, admittedly. :eek:
Well and plus spring break isn’t coordinated by every college in the country (although many state governments are pushing uniformity on the public schools). Some schools use a two semester system, some use a quarter system, some use a trimester system. I think since the mid-90s or so the two semester system has been the most popular by a good bit.
I think making a point of splitting from Obama is going to negatively impact a candidate in the African-American community. Clinton is positioning herself as continuing Obama’s legacy. Sanders is positioning himself as rejecting it. But Obama is a very popular figure for many. His approval rating with Democrats is high and with black Democrats is even higher.
Wow. Looking at the county-by-county numbers…
Once you got off the whiter, more affluent areas - Charleston, Myrtle and such - Clinton kicked some serious ass. Some counties…
All Clinton numbers first
Baseline (Charleston Tri-county)
Dorchester: 70-29
Charleston: 66-33
Berkeley (me): 72-27
Inland/non-metro
Dillon: 84-15
Marion: 85-14
Lee: 88-11
Sumter: 87-13
Newberry: 81-18
Looks like Sanders did better in the parts of the Upstate that look to Clemson and such. That’s to be expected.
The top county I could find was Allendale - in the southwest (sort of) - which went 91% Clinton.
Yes, those are sparser populated but 85-91%? That’s a slaughter. I wonder if Sanders even bothered to have campaign organizations in any of those counties.
He had over 200 paid staffers in the Palmetto state and spent over $2m in ad buys, so you’d think he should’ve had at least some presence throughout the state. But given the margins with which he’s lost, the money and staffers don’t appear to have been too effective anywhere.
You’re right about that. I don’t think I saw a margin that had Clinton with less than 60% of the vote in any county. I admit I thought she’d win - and I voted for her - but not with this sort of resounding thud.
Here’s the spring break article from Politico. I don’t think it’s just a spring break effect among college students. I believe it’s also as the weather begins to change in 4 season climate states, it’s easy to find distractions from politics as the days get longer and the weather gets better.
Um. It’s not like the weather ever keeps us indoors here in South Carolina.
I stand by my hypothesis of early excuse-making. That’s loser talk.
Though he didn’t retweet me or even “heart” my tweet (hmph), it looks like I spurred the legendary journalist (and presidential speechwriter) James Fallows to use the awesome word “churlish” to describe Bernie’s sore loser response to the results tonight:
His own separate tweet 11 min. later (as of now, his last word for the night)
Note too that he agrees that “the classy route is to show up and congratulate the winner when it’s not you”. A lot of Bernheads are arguing with him, saying “he released a statement, no one cares”…but no, goddammit, this is important. I said before that I don’t want to gloat or rub this in, and I meant it. But there are standards of courtesy and it bothers me to see them blown off like this. If HRC had just snuck off and “released a statement” the night Bernie won NH, Bernheads would have gone off on her, bigtime.
I’m not sure its so important to give a live speech congratulating the winner (a written statement there is fine) But if nothing else, its nice to thank the troops “in person” who worked for him in S. Carolina (and I know at least one, so they do exist). Presumably it demoralizing for S Carolina Bernie volunteers and staff to suffer such a stark loss, so a speech recognizing their efforts and a rousing “we’ll keep up the fight…” speech would be nice.
I’m a Hillary supporter. I pointed out spring break and weather as a negative aspect for a grassroots and young supporter campaign like Sanders is running. All of his feel the Bern supporters phone banking in cold snowy Iowa and New Hampshire are going to be a lot less motivated after the ass kicking in South Carolina as well as weather/spring break/papers due in middle to late March