Hillary Clinton still leads big in 2016 polls despite Bernie Sanders surge
Hillary Clinton is crashing and burning in the 2016 election, if you believe the headlines which suggest she’s suddenly losing to outsider Bernie sanders in the democratic primary race. So is she heading toward a repeat of 2008 in which she appeared to be the frontrunner only to watch her party’s nomination go to someone else? Should she just pack it in now and avoid the embarrassment? A check of the national polls suggests something else altogether: Hillary is still winning. By a mile.
Any average of the major national polls shows that Hillary Clinton is leading Bernie Sanders by thirty points or more, the same margin she held over him a month ago. In fact, since he entered the race, her support level from within the democratic party hasn’t fallen off at all. So where is Bernie getting all his momentum?
As it turns out, Sanders has been slowly but surely lapping up all the support that had been earmarked for Elizabeth Warren, dating back to when many expected her to run for President. As it’s become clear that she is content to stay put in the Senate instead of seeking the Presidency, her progressive firebrand supporters have shifted their loyalty toward the Sanders campaign.
Now that’s he’s maxed out on democrats who never supported Hillary Clinton to begin with, Bernie now faces the much more challenging work of convincing Hillary’s supporters to switch their loyalty to him. He has a full fifteen months to try to make that happen, but the polls say he hasn’t had any luck this far when it comes to national averages. For now, the “Bernie surge” is really just a consolidation of anti-Hillary democrats latching onto the more prominent non-Hillary democratic candidate in the race.
@stableytimes