Bernie Sanders and Question of Electability

Democratic Socialist presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders has won all the three democratic primaries held so far. He won tight races in Iowa and New Hampshire states. In Nevada-he won a landslide. There was huge gap between his popular votes and his closest contender.

He has proved himself as the frontrunner to win nomination as Democratic Party presidential candidate. But rightwing Democratic Party establishment and corporate media is still raising the question of his electability.

The rightwing corporate media and Democratic Party establishment raise the question of electability to undermine popularity of Bernie Sanders. They claim that Bernie Sanders cannot get votes of liberals and moderates because of his Democratic Socialist ideas. They thinks that his radical program and democratic socialist ideas will isolate centre right voters from Democratic party.

The other question repeatedly asked that socialism is not a popular idea so Bernie Sanders will lose against president Trump. They both used same argument against Bernie in 2016 and rallied behind Hilary Clinton but she lost to Trump.

The question arises here then who is most electable candidate in Democratic Party. Joe Biden was considered as front runner but he failed to impress the Democratic voters so far. Pete Buttigieg gives tough time to Bernie in first two primaries but he came third in Nevada. Senator Elizabeth Warren is trailing at 4^th position so far.

Bernie Sanders is the most popular candidate in the Democratic Party but questions are still raised on his electability. Just look at the results of Nevada Caucuses to see his wider support and appeal among different communities and voters.

Bernie Sanders locked in a base of voters — young, Latino and liberal — that was more than enough to propel him to a decisive victory in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses.

The 78-year-old Vermont senator captured majorities, or near-majorities, of Nevada Democratic voters in a crowded field, including voters younger than 45, those who call themselves “very liberal” and Hispanic voters, who make up nearly one-fifth of caucusgoers.

The Sanders die-hards came out in force in Nevada, a state where he narrowly lost four years ago to Hillary Clinton, leading him to an easy victory over Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren — and establishing him as the Democratic Party’s frontrunner in the race to take on President Donald Trump in November 2020.

The profile of Sanders’ core support looked a lot like the voters who pushed him to a win in New Hampshire and a still-unresolved photo finish in Iowa, with one important distinction: Sanders drew the largest share of nonwhite voters in Nevada, who made up only a small part of the electorates in the two previous states.

The entrance polls conducted with voters at they arrived at caucus sites throughout the state — combined with exit interviews of nearly 2,000 people who voted early — showed Sanders winning 57 percent of voters younger than 45 and an astounding 65 percent of those under 30. Those figures are significantly greater than the share of young voters Sanders won in New Hampshire earlier this month.

And Sanders, who struggled with older voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, was competitive with them in Nevada. He won 20 percent of those 45 and older, nearly matching Biden (23 percent) for the lead — though Sanders won only 11 percent of those 65 and older, who made up more than a quarter of caucusgoers.

Unlike in the predominantly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire, roughly a third of the Nevada electorate is comprised of minorities, and Sanders won a majority (51 percent) of Latinos, who account for most of those nonwhite voters. The entrance polls show Sanders well ahead of Biden (17 percent), the second-place candidate, among Latinos.

Sanders also won white voters, with 29 percent, and he finished a strong second among black voters, with 27 percent to Biden’s 39 percent.

As in New Hampshire, there was a modest gender gap. Sanders ran 8 percentage points better among men (38 percent) than among women (30 percent).

Among the most progressive voters — the 3 in 10 caucusgoers who said they were “very liberal” — Sanders won 49 percent. That was easily more than Warren, the second-place candidate, who got 17 percent.

But Sanders, with 29 percent, also led the field among voters who said they were “somewhat liberal.” And he ran roughly even with Biden and Buttigieg among those who said they were moderates.

But the Sanders victory still exploded a lot of myths. There was a general believe spread by rightwing commentators and media that Bernie Sanders cannot win more than 30% support.  Remarkably, against a much larger field of candidates Sanders is poised to come close to the same level of support as he did in 2016 in a one-on-one race against Hillary Clinton, to whom he lost 47 percent to 53 percent.

So far he got more than 47% votes in the results declared so far.  He was said to be unable to attract anyone outside his core base. But he held his own with moderate voters (22 percent) and won across every issue area except voters who cared most about foreign policy, who went with Biden.

All of this makes the results of the Nevada caucuses, which in the past have not been treated with the same importance as the contests in the three other early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — matter more this year. They have helped settle lingering questions about Sanders’ appeal.

More important, Nevada exposed his four main rivals as weak, divided, and grasping at increasingly tenuous arguments about how they can still win.

Warren came in a distant fourth place but still argued that since the Vegas debate on Wednesday, when she reversed a yearlong plan not to pillory her opponents, “our support has been growing everywhere,” Except Nevada, apparently.

In fact, voters who decided in the days following the debate were roughly divided between supporting Sanders (24 percent), Pete Buttigieg (21 percent), Warren (21 percent), and Biden (19 percent).

The momentum of Buttigieg, who was Sanders’ strongest opponent in Iowa and New Hampshire, stalled out in Nevada. He slipped into third place, well behind Biden. Long-shot candidacies need to continue to surge forward with unexpected results to overcome doubts. But Buttigieg’s success in Iowa and New Hampshire was not enough to change the minds of enough people in Nevada.

A victory here for him would have been catalytic, but the Sanders blowout has halted his rise. He is still likely to be second behind Sanders in the delegate race, but the early states are all about momentum, not delegates.