The Democratic party has a big problem, and they don’t want voters to know — Vermont Senator (and troublemaker) Bernie Sanders could hand Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump the White House.
It comes down to Sanders supporters extreme distaste for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Sanders supporters don’t like Clinton. In fact, they seemingly hate her — a lot. And they’re vowing to refuse to vote for her in November in large numbers.
According to a recent Bloomberg survey of Sanders supporters, nearly half say they won’t vote for Clinton.
The mainstream media continues to point out that Clinton enjoys a general election lead over Trump in head-to-head polls, and they’re right — but they’re taking a narrow view. When presented as the only two options, Sanders supporters back Clinton overwhelmingly against Trump.
However, they’re leaving out an important factor — Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.
And when the field is expanded to include him, the polling math gets hairy for the Clinton campaign.
According to the June 14th Bloomberg Politics national poll, released Wednesday, 18% of Sanders primary supporters intend to vote for Johnson and 22% say they’ll vote Trump.
Only 55% say they’ll follow the Democratic National Committees call for unity and support Clinton — and that puts millions of votes in play.
If Sanders supporters’ anti-Clinton sentiment doesn’t change — and doesn’t change drastically — they could easily hand Trump the keys to the Oval Office.
Using the results of the 2012 general election (and this year shapes up similarly in terms of demographics) and Bloomberg Politics poll numbers, we can see just how much Clinton is hurt by Sanders’ supporters turning to Johnson.
According to Real Clear Politics, just over 43% of voters chose Sanders over Clinton in the Democratic primary.
Should 18% of Sanders 43% share go Johnson’s way — and we assume the rest of the 2012 general election numbers between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney hold steady — that gives Johnson a 5% share of the total general election vote.
Sanders has yet to concede the race, and warned Democrats on Thursday that his political revolution is “just getting started.”
“Clinton will need superdelegates to take her over the top at the convention in Philadelphia. In other words, it will be a contested convention,” Sanders promised in May.
These same superdelegates that will push Clinton over the top are deeply resented by Sanders supporters. “There have been complaints of threatening phone calls, angry emails and intimidation via social media” towards superdelegates from Sanders backers, according to The Telegraph.
With huge numbers of his supporters planning to “crash” the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and their history of violent outbursts at recent Democratic functions, it means Philadelphia could be a looming disaster for establishment Democrats.
Should Trump succeed in party unity and Clinton fail — meaning everything else from the 2012 general election held constant –the 22% of Democratic party disloyalists that told pollsters they’d choose Trump over Clinton makes it a landslide match-up — Trump trounces Clinton, 53% to 42%.
Even if Sanders is able to convince his Trump-bound primary voters to back Clinton, and we exclude Trump’s 22% share of Sanders supporters and just count Johnson’s influence — the popular vote still swings Republican, 47% to 45%.
Johnson’s presence — and to a lesser extent, Green Party candidate Jill Stein — would play spoiler to Clinton.
It’s similar to what happened just four presidential elections in the past. In the 2000 general election, former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader carved out a 2.7% share of the popular vote — half of what Johnson currently threatens to grab.
Still to this day, Democrats grumble that Nader cost former Vice President Al Gore the presidency — and they’re not wrong. Florida’s 25 electoral college votes, the deciding factor in the election, were won by former President George W. Bush by a razor thin margin — 537 votes.
Now consider that 97,488 votes were cast for Nader in Florida that year, and one can begin to imagine the devastating impact Sanders disloyalists could have to Clinton’s 2016 presidential hopes.
Johnson securing anywhere near 5% of the general election vote suddenly transforms a lot of previously-solid Democrat states into Republican wins.
And that 2016 electoral college math starts to look pretty good for Trump.
