The Problem With Bernie Sanders’ Polling Argument

[SecularMotion]

For months, Bernie Sanders has been pointing to polls that show him performing better in head-to-head general match-ups against Republicans than Hillary Clinton.

For Sanders, the numbers offer a bold rebuke to skeptics who say that a wild-haired democratic socialist could not win in November. As he’s slipped farther behind in the primary, Sanders has made the polling argument time and again, even arguing that Democratic superdelegates should overlook Clinton’s lead in pledged delegates and raw votes to choose him.

“The Democrats want to see the strongest candidate possible take on Trump or some other Republican,” Sanders told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Thursday evening. “At this point, according to the polls, that is me.”

The Vermont Senator beats Republican frontrunner Donald Trump by 14 points while Clinton is ahead of Trump by just 9 points, according to the HuffPost Pollster’s average of polls of who voters would support in the general election. Sanders beats Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by 13 points while Clinton only beats Cruz by 4 points.

http://fortune.com/2016/04/23/bernie-sanders-polling-argument/

[uponit7771]

1. They know or should know those polls change the second after convention, they just want more money..

... to fuel Team Used Car Salesmen (Weaver and Devine)

[baldguy]

2. Familiarity breeds contempt; and Americans are least familiar with Sanders at this point.

If Republicans viewed Sanders as the likely Democratic nominee, he would face negative advertising and intense scrutiny of his record, on everything from his honeymoon in the Soviet Union to his large spending programs. Like any less well-known candidate, Sanders’ unfavorable ratings would rise as people became more familiar with him, pollsters say.

For now, Sanders serves as a kind of stand-in for the Democratic Party, a blank-slate candidate whose popularity reflects the overall favorability of the party, says Stan Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster. The Democratic Party is viewed more favorably than the Republican Party, with a favorable-unfavorable rating of about 45-47 compared with 31-58 for the Republicans, according to poll averages. That suggests that in a national race between a generic Democrat and a generic Republican, the generic Democrat would win. At this point in the race, that “brand advantage” benefits Sanders.

Which is ironic considering that part of his strategy is to attack Democrats and the Democratic Party.

[Mike Nelson]

3. The Rebublicans...

...would have a field day with Bernie Sanders! Most people realize his negatives would go up and it would be difficult to elect him. I'm sure Bernie knows this, too. He's stating facts about polls which appear to support something he knows won't happen. It's not really a lie, but perhaps a little dishonest. Still, it's something a candidate does to win - it's a contest and you have to play your cards. He doesn't have a good hand, but he's playing to win. I don't mind this as much as the negative on Hillary. He was more successful before the "artful smear" started.

[Gothmog]

4. 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.
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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]

5. 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]

6. 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]

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