The Problem With Bernie Sanders’ Polling Argument

[Tarc]

The Problem With Bernie Sanders’ Polling Argument

The numbers are accurate, but both Democratic and Republican pollsters say that they don’t mean as much as Sanders says they do.

To be sure, Clinton also makes the case that she would be a stronger candidate in a general election due to her experience and ability to compromise. But Sanders’ emphasis on the polls is misguided, experts say.

General election polls taken months before voting day have a history of being wrong. According to data compiled by FiveThirtyEight, general election polls taken a year in advance have been inaccurate by more than 5 percentage points in the last 10 out of 14 elections for which there is data.

Even polls six months out are inaccurate, too. For example, at this point in the 2000 election, late April polls showed then-Gov. George W. Bush with a strong national lead of five points over then-Vice President Al Gore. Bush lost the popular vote to Gore by half a percentage point that November.

Yep.

[griffi94]

1. Bernie would be in awesome shape if we chose our candidate based on a national poll

and we stopped polling while he's ahead.

Sadly for Bernie it doesn't work like that.
He's not going to have the delegates so he's not
going to be the nominee.

It's a pretty straight forward proposition.

[Blue Meany]

2. Good points, and I think I agree that he should not become the

the candidate on that basis, even though he is my preferred candidate. But if it became clear that the Democratic electorate as a whole strongly favored Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton by the time of Convention, then I could see him getting the nomination. But I think this would only happen if there was either a scandal, leaked information (e.g., about Hillary's health) or some dramatic event like a stock market crash that would cause a shift in electoral sentiment. None of these things is very likely, but it's still a good idea to have a second candidate running, just in case. As Hillary said in 2008, RFK didn't make to the Convention, so you never know what will happen.

[Gothmog]

3. Great Article on why match up polls are worthless

These match up polls are worthless but they are all that Sanders has to make the electablity argument. Here is a good thread talking about these polls http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511038010

The reliance on these polls by Sanders supporters amuse me. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/harrys-guide-to-2016-election-polls/

Ignore hypothetical matchups in primary season – they also measure nothing. General election polls before and during the primary season have a very wide margin of error. That’s especially the case for candidates who aren’t even in the race and therefore haven’t been treated to the onslaught of skeptical media coverage usually associated with being the candidate.

Sanders supporters have to rely on these worthless polls because it is clear that Sanders is not viable in a general election where the Kochs will be spending $887 million and the RNC candidate may spend an additional billion dollars.
s
No one should rely on hypo match up type polls in selecting a nominee at this stage of the race. Sanders would be a very weak general election candidate

[Gothmog]

4. Are Sanders' General election Numbers Fools Gold

These polls are worthless because Sanders has not been vetted by the media http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/first-read-three-weeks-go-three-margin-error-races-n493946

Not surprisingly, Sanders' campaign is touting those general-election numbers. "There was fresh evidence on Sunday that confirms Bernie Sanders would be the most electable Democratic Party nominee for president because he performs much better than Hillary Clinton," the campaign blasted out to reporters yesterday. But here is a legitimate question to ask: Outside of maybe New Hampshire (where Sanders enjoys a geographic advantage), are Sanders' general-election numbers fool's gold? When is the last time you've seen national Republicans issue even a press release on Sanders? Given the back-and-forth over Bill Clinton's past -- and given Sanders calling Bill Clinton's behavior "disgraceful" -- when is the last time anyone has brought up the candidate's 1972 essay about a woman fantasizing about "being raped by three men simultaneously"? Bottom line: It's always instructive to take general-election polling with a grain of salt, especially 300 days before the general election. And that's particularly true for a candidate who hasn't actually gone through the same wringer the other candidates have.

These match up polls are not meaningful at this stage

[Gothmog]

5. Democrats would be insane to nominate Bernie Sanders

Dana Milbank has some good comments on general election match up polls https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-would-be-insane-to-nominate-bernie-sanders/2016/01/26/0590e624-c472-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html?hpid=hp_opinions-for-wide-side_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Sanders and his supporters boast of polls showing him, on average, matching up slightly better against Trump than Clinton does. But those matchups are misleading: Opponents have been attacking and defining Clinton for a quarter- century, but nobody has really gone to work yet on demonizing Sanders.

Watching Sanders at Monday night’s Democratic presidential forum in Des Moines, I imagined how Trump — or another Republican nominee — would disembowel the relatively unknown Vermonter.

The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the “socialist” label and requested that Sanders define it “so that it doesn’t concern the rest of us citizens.”

Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who don’t want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: “Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top — that’s my definition of democratic socialism.”

But that’s not how Republicans will define socialism — and they’ll have the dictionary on their side. They’ll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. They’ll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldn’t be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists don’t win national elections in the United States .

Sanders on Monday night also admitted he would seek massive tax increases — “one of the biggest tax hikes in history,” as moderator Chris Cuomo put it — to expand Medicare to all. Sanders, this time making a comparison with Britain and France, allowed that “hypothetically, you’re going to pay $5,000 more in taxes,” and declared, “W e will raise taxes, yes we will.” He said this would be offset by lower health-insurance premiums and protested that “it’s demagogic to say, oh, you’re paying more in taxes.”

Well, yes — and Trump is a demagogue.

Sanders also made clear he would be happy to identify Democrats as the party of big government and of wealth redistribution. When Cuomo said Sanders seemed to be saying he would grow government “bigger than ever,” Sanders didn’t quarrel, saying, “P eople want to criticize me, okay,” and “F ine, if that’s the criticism, I accept it.”

Sanders accepts it, but are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.

Match up polls are worthless because these polls do not measure what would happen to Sanders in a general election where Sanders is very vulnerable to negative ads.

[Gothmog]

6. From the 538 website

[Gothmog]

7. Here is more on the lack of vetting by Sanders and why it makes these polls worthless

The premise of Sanders' lame claim that he should stay in is that he is a better candidate in the general election. That claim is simply false. Sanders has not been vetted which means that Sanders is very vulnerable to attack ads. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/04/19/some-republicans-see-socialist-bernie-sanders-as-the-weaker-opponent/

But allow me to highlight what I think is an under-appreciated aspect of this whole “electability” argument.

This current situation is in many ways unprecedented, and makes it harder than ever to gauge which candidate is more electable this fall. We have one Democratic candidate who has been a major national figure for 25 years, and has been subjected to unrelenting national attacks for just as long, and one Democratic candidate who legitimately is significantly more liberal than many in the party.

And so, it’s at least possible that two decades of attacks on Clinton are baked into her polling against the GOP candidates. Nor can the possibility be dismissed that some of Sanders’s positions (middle class tax hikes as part of a transition to single payer, which he defends on the grounds that Americans would benefit overall) could be made into liabilities, if Republicans prosecuted attacks on them effectively. There is a danger in being too risk averse, of course, but that doesn’t mean there is no chance that Republicans could successfully use these positions to paint Sanders as an ideological outlier, as those GOP strategists suggest above.

Of course, the fact that Sanders is a relative unknown nationally, at least compared to Clinton, could conceivably play in his favor — if he could successfully rebut GOP attacks on his proposals and background, he might arguably end up having less baggage in a general election than does Clinton, given her dismal personal ratings. And the rise of negative partisanship — in which voters are motivated more than ever by dislike of the other side — could also help mitigate any negatives about Sanders.

The point is that gaming out the electability argument — either way — is made harder than ever by the fact that the juxtaposition of these two particular figures has created such a strange and unique situation.

Match up polling is meaningless unless both candidates are fully vetted. Sanders is not vetted and is very vulnerable