Take this with a grain of salt, it’s based on anecdotes and my best guess, which just this year alone has been wrong several times. None the less, it seems that the assumption is that if Bloomberg and Warren were to drop out that Bloomberg’s voters would mostly go to Biden and that Warren’s would go to Sanders. I think this line of thinking is wrong regarding Warren. Sanders is unlikely to get the majority of Warren supporters. The people who I personally know who support Warren are doing so (the way I see it) due to identity politics. They are older, educated white women who are liberal. They also intensely dislike Sanders, and would likely change their support to Biden rather than Sanders should Warren drop out.
To make a long story short, at this point I think Sanders benefits by having Bloomberg and Warren in the race. If Warren drops out, it won’t help Sanders.
I wanted Warren and I agree with you about her support. I wanted her because she’s the smartest and most thoughtful candidate and I think she’d be way out in front if she were a man. Her work to create the CFPB was fantastic and it was having a real positive effect until it was gutted. She also has much less baggage than Biden or Sanders.
Sanders is last on my list (I’ll vote for him in the general election, of course, if it comes to that).
She was my preferred candidate, but her campaign failed to launch. The sad fact is that Warren doesn’t really have any supporters, so it doesn’t matter where her voters go. The few of us around are almost surely going to vote for whoever gets the final nomination. I liked her although I had reservations about a couple of unforced errors, like stupidly engaging with Trump on that Pocahontas crap. I don’t fit the description of a Warren supporter in the OP in that I am not a woman, but it is right about one thing: part of my support of Warren was based on my dislike of Sanders. I liked the positions of Warren and Sanders, but thought that she was the better candidate, I have a long history of backing the wrong horse in primaries.
Well, I don’t love being called “older” (I’m 47) and I wouldn’t describe my dislike of Sanders as intense, this describes me. I voted for Warren in NC, but if she hadn’t been on the ballot, I would have gone with Biden over Sanders. IMO, Bernie engenders the same sort of tribalism that Trump does and I think that’s extremely unhealthy for this country.
Yeah, my read on it is that the Warren supporters who view Warren and Sanders as roughly equally as acceptable have already switched to Sanders, hence why there was a huge slump in Warren’s numbers as the progressives consolidated around Sanders. The remaining Warren supporters, a lot of them I know have a deep antipathy towards Sanders but can’t quite bring themselves to vote for Biden which is why they remain Warren supporters. If she drops out, I don’t think it’s going to be the boost Sanders supporters are hoping for.
Flik, you make a good point — I think a higher percentage of Bloomberg supporters/voters will switch easily to Biden, compared to the percentage of Warren supporters/voters who who will switch easily to Sanders — and a lot of that difference has to do with people who are still hoping for a woman candidate and president this year (at least, that’s part for their reasoning), but didn’t see Klobuchar as having much of a chance to be that person (her polling, her debating…), and of course Liz is still in this while Amy is not.
I voted for Warren in CO on Saturday, before the results from SC. Had it already been (effectively) a two-person race, I would’ve voted for Biden over Sanders. For me, this election is about repair, not revolution. I want someone with expertise in running the government. I like expertise. Experts are sometimes wrong, but I think, more often, they do their jobs so well we don’t need to pay attention. Biden may be a little past his prime, but he’s been around long enough to be able to gather the most competent, experienced people in the country to fix the omnishambles that Trump will certainly leave in his wake.
I think Warren could’ve done that, too. I’m much less confident that Sanders can.
Previous to this OP I was also thinking that Warren supporters would all go to Sanders. However now that its posted, I realized that if she were viable Warren would be my first choice as candidate, and that Sanders was my last choice. So I am actually a counter example to my own assumption. The other posts to this thread seem to confirm the OP’s notion. So are there any Warren supporters who are actually moving in the direction of Sanders?
Warren supporter here. (43-year-old white college educated man, if we’re doing the identity politics check) I like Warren best, but I’m also a pragmatist. I think Warren could have brought much of the country together, but if it’s gotta be Bernie or Biden, Biden is more of a Uniter than Bernie. He is more likely to win the crucial swing states.
If the vote were purely on a “whose policy do I like better”, then I’d vote Bernie over Joe.
My vote is already recorded for Warren, btw so my opinion doesn’t matter much. Although since I am in Iowa, I have little confidence that my vote is recorded correctly.
I think some Dopers will likely fall into the demographics described in the article: left home to get at least a 4 year degree (with no intent to return) and then moved again after graduation.
I feel bad for Warren, she was probably the smartest one in the field and in my opinion the most likeable of the progressives. If she drops out, her supporters will split in some manner between Biden and Sanders. I’m not sure if it’s going to be significantly more in one direction or the other.
I voted for Warren. The American electorate being virulently sexist didn’t enter into the equation. I’m shifting to Biden, not Bernie. We need a return to normalcy before we launch a revolution.
I voted for Warren yesterday but was prepared to vote for Bernie if he won the nomination. I voted for Bernie in the primary four years ago. If it is Biden I will probably vote for the Green Party.
I am a 49 year old white woman. Representation is important for many reasons. I think the phrase “identity politics” is extremely dismissive.
Warren is also my senator. I voted for her twice. All other things being equal between two candidates I would probably choose the one from an underrepresented demographic. But I would never base my vote on that entirely. I didn’t vote for Hillary.
I like Warren and Sanders because I think they are bringing up important issues that have been ignored. Cost of housing, cost of education, need for improvement on the ACA, income inequality and just generally the increasing difficulty in attaining the kind of life the previous generations could generally expect. Warren edged out Bernie for me because she had better plans, IMHO.
She has a lot of power right at this moment. It’s a two man race and she is ideologically bound to one of them. She was a lot of peoples second choice.
