There was a fairly bizarre result in the Michigan exit polls tonight: 14% of Michigan Democratic primary voters wanted the next president to “be less liberal” than President Obama. These voters supported Bernie Sanders by 57-43 [compared to his 2-point victory in the state.]
This appears to be an unexpected support base for Senator Sanders. Bernie Sanders has won this group of voters in every Democratic primary for which they constituted a large enough sample size to have results in the CNN exit polls. Specifically, he’s won voters who’d prefer a less liberal president by:
87-11 in Vermont,
59-24 in Oklahoma,
60-38 in Massachusetts,
50-43 in Iowa.
[In all other states, the sample size was too small to have crosstabs — unsurprisingly, this isn’t a giant group of voters in the Democratic presidential primaries.]
In every of these states, Bernie Sanders’ victory with these voters was larger than his overall margin of victory, so I think it’s fair to say that this is a fairly clear pattern by this point. His support with these voters has also been fairly decisive in close races. Excluding these voters from the electorate [and relying on the exit polls], Hillary Clinton would have won Michigan by 2%, lost Oklahoma by 2%, and won Massachusetts by 6%.
The real question that I’m curious about — and I’m interested in hearing explanations for — is why these voters are supporting Senator Sanders. Regardless of how you feel about Bernie, I think it’s safe to say that people who support him because they want a president *less liberal* than President Obama would be very disappointed if they did get him elected. Possible explanations that come to mind for me:
- Protest votes. If you’re a conservative Democrat who opposes Obama and sees Hillary as his likely successor, you might vote Sanders as a protest, thinking that he doesn’t have a chance of getting elected. Similarly, if you really really hate Hillary Clinton, you might take any chance you could get to vote against her.
- Conservative sabotage — much rumored, but little evidenced for in this year’s primary. Back in the 2008 primary, we could quantify this measure by exit poll questions that asked who you’d vote for in November [e.g. if you voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary, but said that you’d support the Republican over her in November, it was pretty clear that your motives in doing so weren’t the most honorable.] Unfortunately, these sorts of questions weren’t asked in this year’s exit polls, so there’s no way to gauge the extent of this today. That said, it’s unlikely to be a massive component of the elections, given how contested the Republican primary still is.
- Expats from Europe who never quite learned what ‘liberal’ means in the U.S. context [/snark.]
- ???