Bernie Sanders leads Donald Trump in polls, even when you remind people he's a socialist

[Donkees]

Socialism is unpopular, but America’s leading socialist isn’t.

By Matthew Yglesias
Jan 31, 2020, 9:30am EST

Excerpt:

The poll: Calling Sanders a socialist doesn’t change much
Data for Progress used the Lucid survey sampling platform to test three different versions of a Sanders and Trump polling matchup question. The survey was in the field from January 9 to January 19 of 2020 and ran these three polls:

No information: “If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump?”

Partisan cues: “If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump?”

Socialists and billionaires: “If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Democrat Bernie Sanders, who wants to tax the billionaire class to help the working class and Republican Donald Trump, who says Sanders is a socialist who supports a government takeover of healthcare and open borders?”

In all three versions, Bernie beats Trump, albeit by slightly different margins. Sanders does best in the version of the question that provides no information at all. Giving the candidates their partisan labels increases Sanders’s lead somewhat, and giving the hypothetical messages leaves Sanders with a lead that’s somewhere in between the two other scenarios.



https://www.vox.com/2020/1/31/21113780/bernie-sanders-socialism-electability-primaries

[guillaumeb]

1. Even with the word socialist?

Turnout isone key. And persuading everyone who we know to vote is also a key.

[Tiggeroshii]

6. Yeah I think that's what this poll is about.

I talked to a Trump supporter, and he said he would probably vote for Bernie over Trump, but not Biden over Trump. I said "Even though he's a socialist?" And his response was that "even though he's a socialist, you still knwo what he wants, and he's honest and independent. I don't trust Biden because I think he's controlled by the party."

As batshit as that logic is, there is a level of crossparty trust that Bernie receives largely because he's an independent but mostly because of who he is.

[guillaumeb]

7. That is interesting, but we do not know what this Trump supporter

will do in November.

[Tiggeroshii]

8. Well the guy himself was basically an independent who leaned republican.

And voted republican mostly. Those are the kinds of people that are going to put us over the top regardless of who our nominee is. For instance, my uncle is a super conservative Christian, lifelong Republican. One of his core values is decency however, and while he plugged his nose and voted for Trump because of things like the Supreme court, etc, he has declared that he will be voting for the Democratic nominee unless the GOP replaces the top of the ticket. The man lives in Missouri, and I know there are more folks like him in similar states.

[guillaumeb]

9. And that is cause for hope in November.

In my view, 2018 provided an example of what an energized mass of voters can accomplish. We must all work even harder this year.

[BeyondGeography]

2. Come back when the guns of August have fired

[George II]

3. How about the other candidates? You do realize there are several other candidates running, right?

[highplainsdem]

4. The "socialists and billionaires" question is basically an ad for Sanders. You're not going to

get any argument from most of the electorate that billionaires should be taxed to help the working class. That's something all Dems and most Republicans are in favor of. The debate is over how much to tax them and how to spend the money.

Even including "Trump says Sanders is a socialist" doesn't detract much from what was said before, since it follows it immediately, and the fact of the matter is that almost all people in favor of taxing billionaires to help the working class AREN'T socialists, so the net effect of that question is to make people think Trump is unfairly calling Sanders a socialist.

The ONLY way they could really have tested how much the socialist label would hurt Sanders is if they'd asked:

"If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were socialist Bernie Sanders, running as a Democrat, and Republican Donald Trump?"

I'd've been interested in seeing the results of that question.

[scheming daemons]

5. Biden leads Trump by more

[SWBTATTReg]

10. I think the big point here is that the republicans have cried wolf! too many times about ...

'socialism'...and it is losing its effectiveness, as it should, being that it is nowhere the evil genie as it has been made out to be. If anything, the only ones that will take notice of this term are the 25%-30% hardcore rump voters, and that's it.

They are losing their effectiveness (republicans in general, rump in particular)...no one believes rump anymore ... look at his Ukraine crap and how it's going down.

[BannonsLiver]

11. Nah they will distill it

On a macro level it’s just a meme. But when they start explaining how Bernie’s socialist M4A will come with a healthy tax increase for middle class Americans it becomes weaponized. And Bernie is on record over and over again saying he is going to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for his ideas. A few well done ads run on a loop and it’ll be all she wrote. They will define him by the end of the summer.

[SWBTATTReg]

12. They've done this before and it didn't stick. Amazing that it keeps resurrecting itself...nt

[BannonsLiver]

16. It will definitely stick.

The ads write themselves. Americans don’t do nuance at all.

[MineralMan]

13. Data for Progress?

It is difficult to know whether that’s true or not, but a recent message-testing experiment run by the progressive group Data for Progress at least calls that theory into question.

Heck, the people they sampled probably favor socialists, really. Of course, there wasn't anything about who was sampled in the VOX article at your link. So, who knows?

[emmaverybo]

14. Bernie has a lot of other liabilities and not enough accomplishment, likability, AA support, or

ability to connect with people outside his Bernie bubble to offset them. He also has a significant health risk.

Not the best candidate for the GE, ardent as are his primary followers. Widespread appeal is not his thing. Too much bourgeois happy birthday-ing required to work that.

[BeyondGeography]

15. Brings back recent memories

Last edited Fri Jan 31, 2020, 05:20 PM - Edit history (1)

Link to tweet

[Uncle Joe]

17. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Donkees.

[David__77]

18. Interesting.

Not surprising!

[Quixote1818]

19. K and R