I know this is a very popular narrative in some parts, that Sanders has gotten where he is because he appeals to the people who are most in need of help (what you refer to as the “lower classes”).
The problem is that the data doesn’t support that narrative.
CNN has done (or gathered, not sure which) exit and entrance poll information on 20 of the Democratic primaries and caucuses thus far. The data for Virginia is here (2016 Election Center – Presidential Primaries and Caucuses – 2016 Election Center – CNNPolitics.com); you can use that page easily enough to find the others.
It’s interesting to look at two breakdowns in particular.
The first is income levels. The two most interesting categories for our purposes are the ones at the left and right ends: voters who earn under $30K a year, and voters who earn more than $100K. If Sanders’s success is because the lower classes are suffering, we would expect him to do extremely well among the <$30K crowd and much more poorly among those with six-figure incomes. In a race that was pretty much a tie, we’d expect to see Sanders winning the poorest voters by a lot and losing the richest voters by about the same amount; in a race where Sanders did well, we’d expect to see him winning both groups, but especially the poorest voters; you get the idea.
So is that what we get? Not exactly. In 11 of the 20 states, by my count, Sanders did do better among the poorest voters than among the wealthiest. In Iowa, for instance, he lost the wealthiest voters by a 55-37 margin while winning the poorest 57 to 41. But the margins weren’t usually that big: in OK he won the wealthiest voters 49-46 and the poorest 54-44.
And in 9 of the 20 states, the reverse was true. In Ohio, Clinton barely won the richest voters (51-49) but won the poorest by 21 points, 59-38. The differences in Florida, South Carolina, and Illinois are even starker. Given that the four most populous states for which we have exit poll data (TX, FL, IL, and OH) are all in this group, it seems likely that overall there’s little or no difference: Sanders is winning the poorest voters to about the same degree as he’s winning the richest.
So it’s a wash, at best, for Sanders in this metric. Not a ringing endorsement of the idea that this is a campaign driven by the suffering of the lower classes. (Unless, of course, you want to assume that people are voting against their own interests and it’s their own damn fault that they don’t know what’s best for them. I suppose you can make that argument if you want to; I’ve seen it here on this board. I think it’s an elitist, condescending argument, but you can make it.)
Well, but of course income is only one part of being lower class: education is another. So we can do the same thing there, thanks to the CNN level-of-education breakdowns. Again, we can look at both ends of the spectrum: those with a high school education at most, and those who have done post-graduate work. And this time, when we compare which of the two candidates was preferred by each group, we get…
…Sanders doing (relatively) better among no-college voters, compared to post-graduate voters, in 8 out of the 20 states. In Nevada, for instance, he split the least educated group 49-49 with Clinton, but lost the most educated voters pretty decisively, 62 for Clinton and 35 for Sanders.
But in the other 12 states, Sanders did *better *among the most educated voters than he did among the least educated. In Missouri he lost the graduate crowd barely, 51-49, while losing badly, 62-37, among those who hadn’t been to college. And again, most of the most populous states are ones in which Sanders did better among the very well educated than among the least well educated. --It’s really difficult to argue that Sanders has been more attractive to poorly educated voters than he has to people with graduate degrees.
TL;DR: The data shows that people of the lowest educational background and the lowest income levels are no more likely to vote for Sanders than people at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
Now, sure, there may be some problems with the data. Maybe I copied down some of the figures wrong; you’re welcome to check. Some of Sanders’s best states aren’t included here, though it’s hard to see why the breakdowns in MN, say, would be all that different from the breakdowns in Illinois, Iowa, or Michigan. And exit polling is inexact. Maybe there’s some other trove of data out there that does a better job of determining the relative popularity of Sanders among these groups. And maybe–maybe–that data wouldn’t show that actual lower-class people are finding Clinton to be just as good a choice as Sanders, if not more so.
But the exit polls paint a pretty clear picture, and that picture is this: Sanders doesn’t have any special appeal to people of “the lower class.” He’s at least as popular among the privileged. If Sanders’s campaign is being driven by the suffering of the lower classes, the people in that category don’t seem to have noticed.