Democratic caucuses and primaries

d4m10n said:
"No one" is most likely to have over half of pledged delegates after all the votes are tallied, in the most recent revision of the 538 model.

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ETA: This is something of a nightmare scenario, IMO. Moderates & mainstream Dems could easily cut a deal (e.g. between the top two non-DSA campaigns) but then the brokered ticket would hemorrhage electoral support from the DSA wing of the party. If they agree to support Bernie instead, they would be thwarting the majority of their own voters.
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Is there any real evidence that these Pete, Biden, and Klobuchar voters see themselves as a monolithic "anti-Bernie" bloc? There seems to be the assumption that the voters here see the race in purely ideological lines, Bernie vs the centrists. I remain skeptical of this.

Is there some polling out there showing who these people see as their preferred 2nd choice?

It's one hell of an assumption that all these people are firm ideological centrists that oppose Bernie.

Any selection for a candidate at a brokered convention is going to be a candidate that never enjoyed majority support of the party.

Despite what desperate pundits might say, Pete, Joe, and Amy aren't running as three people stacked up wearing a big trenchcoat.
 
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A couple of thoughts.
It is weird that the parties select their candidates via a State run election. Its a bit of an historical quirk though. They used to all just send reps to the convention where deals were made and candidates selected by the party mandarins. They were originally just a non-binding referendum, much like the primary in Washington State as of 2016. Eventually they supplanted the caucuses and back room deals because democracy is good so even more democracy must be better?

The complaints about the parties being basically the same are silly. They are much more ideologically different than they have been for most if not all of the last 150 years. They used to be much more of a coalition of regional parties which meant each party had much more ideological differences with in themselves than they did between each other. There used to be more conservative Dems and Liberal Reps than there are now.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Is there any real evidence that these Pete, Biden, and Klobuchar voters see themselves as a monolithic "anti-Bernie" bloc? There seems to be the assumption that the voters here see the race in purely ideological lines, Bernie vs the centrists. I remain skeptical of this..
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No "anti-Bernie" per se but anti-outlier and anti-"single topic voter and that topic is who the candidate is."

Most (90% - 78%) Biden, Buttigeig, Warren, and Bloomberg (I am attempting to find numbers for Klobuchar so I'll put her on the back burner for now) supporters say they will definitely vote for the Democratic Nominee if it is not their preferred candidate.

Only 53% of Bernie supporters say the same thing, with 47% answering either a hard no or a soft maybe.

So in that sense is it as "Everyone Versus Bernie" fight practically. Choosing between Biden and Warren will not have the same effect as choosing between Biden and Sanders. The numbers support this.

The "Bernie supporters tend more to see this as their candidates race or not worth participating in" is not some strawman slander we've made up to make the Bernie Bros look bad.

But again the problem is how easily this gets twisted in "Therefore Bernie should get the nod because we'll lose the most people if he doesn't get the nomination."
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Is there some polling out there showing who these people see as their preferred 2nd choice?
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I think the best evidence we have is the Iowa caucuses, where Bernie had a major lead after the first round, but after the low performers were culled, and they did the second round of votes, they had mostly switched to Pete and he effectively caught up (in delegates). And all the Bros had a meltdown because they didn't use the first round results, although that's not how caucuses work (or have ever worked).

So in an actual case where a lot of voters had to switch to their second choice, they didn't switch to Bernie.
 
pgwenthold said:
I think the best evidence we have is the Iowa caucuses, where Bernie had a major lead after the first round, but after the low performers were culled, and they did the second round of votes, they had mostly switched to Pete and he effectively caught up (in delegates). And all the Bros had a meltdown because they didn't use the first round results, although that's not how caucuses work (or have ever worked).

So in an actual case where a lot of voters had to switch to their second choice, they didn't switch to Bernie.
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Bernie supporters were upset because Bernie won the popular vote count in both the 1st and final rounds, but still came out behind. Sure, that's how caucuses work, but don't confuse delegate numbers with popular support. Pete never had more raw votes than Bernie, even after he picked up non-viable supporters.

Some of those 2nd round votes went to Bernie too. It's hard to say with any certainty how many people see Bernie as their #2 choice, and Iowa surely isn't representative enough to make any claims about the party at large.

Pundits totaling up three candidate and claiming that is proof the party is majority "Never Bernie" is absurd. The devil is in the details, and we just don't have those details.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
Some of those 2nd round votes went to Bernie too.
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But most of them did not. That's why his lead shrunk significantly in the second round.

That Sanders still had a lead in overall votes after the second round does not have anything to do with his popularity as a second choice, which was the question at hand.
 
pgwenthold said:
But most of them did not. That's why his lead shrunk significantly in the second round.

That Sanders still had a lead in overall votes after the second round does not have anything to do with his popularity as a second choice, which was the question at hand.
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Extrapolating anything from the preferences of caucus voters in Iowa is not wise. Iowa is a very poor representation of the country at large.

It is also unclear where Warren voters would land on this. Since she managed to be viable in most cases, her voters did not redistribute.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
Extrapolating anything from the preferences of caucus voters in Iowa is not wise. Iowa is a very poor representation of the country at large.

It is also unclear where Warren voters would land on this. Since she managed to be viable in most cases, her voters did not redistribute.
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"Iowa didnt vote our way, so they don't count". Typical Leftist contribution.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Bernie supporters were upset because Bernie won the popular vote count in both the 1st and final rounds, but still came out behind. Sure, that's how caucuses work, but don't confuse delegate numbers with popular support. Pete never had more raw votes than Bernie, even after he picked up non-viable supporters.

Some of those 2nd round votes went to Bernie too. It's hard to say with any certainty how many people see Bernie as their #2 choice, and Iowa surely isn't representative enough to make any claims about the party at large.

Pundits totaling up three candidate and claiming that is proof the party is majority "Never Bernie" is absurd. The devil is in the details, and we just don't have those details.
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Democratic primaries and caucuses are designed to represent all Democratic voters. Delegates are allocated to states and congressional districts based on Democratic votes in prior general elections. In each district or state, delegates are allocated proportionally. Most of the delegates are chosen at the district level.

One result of this policy is that when a candidate’s support is concentrated in one or two districts a statewide plurality may not result in a plurality of delegates from that state.

When a candidate drops out of the race, delegates pledged to that candidate are free to choose another candidate. If no candidate has a majority of pledged delegates going into the DNC, second choices will determine the outcome.
 
Kestrel said:
Democratic primaries and caucuses are designed to represent all Democratic voters.
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Primaries, arguably. Caucuses definitely not. Caucuses are by their very nature and designed to be exclusive to people without free time on their hands.

(Most) everyone who's interested can, if they put the effort in, stop by somewhere to cast a vote. Not everyone can take a day off from work, find a babysitter, etc to go stand on a specific side of gymnasium for a day.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It's one hell of an assumption that all these people are firm ideological centrists that oppose Bernie.
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They all oppose Bernie inasmuch as they each hope for someone else to win the nomination rather than him, so the only remaining question is whether the candidates they do support are indeed moderate and center-left when compared to him. Do you seriously question this?

(I've seen Klob & Pete & others vilified as centrists so often by Berners that I'm genuinely surprised this is a live question.)
 
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Delvo said:
...or to tell the DP that it really needs to get its act together and start listening to the people and quit being just another RP because it can't count on having any popular support as just a second RP.
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Except here's your problem, if there isn't enough popular support to get your candidate across the line in the Primaries, then that means that you don't have the popular support on your side, and so what you have instead is a "I didn't get my way so I'm taking the ball and going home even it if means more destruction of the country." That's kinda a sucky attitude that is more likely to put people off, and it's a attitude a lot of Bernie Supporters seem to have.
 
It's not at all "even it if means more destruction of the country". It's "because this party is participating in the country's destruction just as much as the other one anyway; they just keep telling me the other is even worse while not really acting any different".
 
JoeMorgue said:
No "anti-Bernie" per se but anti-outlier and anti-"single topic voter and that topic is who the candidate is."

Most (90% - 78%) Biden, Buttigeig, Warren, and Bloomberg (I am attempting to find numbers for Klobuchar so I'll put her on the back burner for now) supporters say they will definitely vote for the Democratic Nominee if it is not their preferred candidate.

Only 53% of Bernie supporters say the same thing, with 47% answering either a hard no or a soft maybe.

So in that sense is it as "Everyone Versus Bernie" fight practically. Choosing between Biden and Warren will not have the same effect as choosing between Biden and Sanders. The numbers support this.

The "Bernie supporters tend more to see this as their candidates race or not worth participating in" is not some strawman slander we've made up to make the Bernie Bros look bad.

But again the problem is how easily this gets twisted in "Therefore Bernie should get the nod because we'll lose the most people if he doesn't get the nomination."
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You can probably relax about that last point, because Bernie looks like he is going to win the nomination.
 
The Bernie Sanders problem: "Waaah, young and working-class voters whose interests both parties have ignored or acted directly against for decades aren't planning to just vote for whichever generic Democrat candidate we put up, like they're supposed to."
 
Myriad said:
The Bernie Sanders problem: "Waaah, young and working-class voters whose interests both parties have ignored or acted directly against for decades aren't planning to just vote for whichever generic Democrat candidate we put up, like they're supposed to."
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Yeah, anyone I know who says something like "Bernie or bust" or equivalents about their favourite politician, regardless of the country, I will try to explain that even if they cannot get their favourite candidate, it would be better for them to choose the next best candidate even if the next best candidate is much worse than their favourite candidate.

This is something that is true by definition. Your best available option is...your best available option.

Now, if someone sincerely does not want their best available option, or they believe that the best available option is not worth lining up to vote for, well...then that is their choice. I don't agree with their choice, but it is theirs to make.
 
Venom said:
The pragmatist in me says vote for Bernie, because if you don't the BernieBros will leave.
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Won't that set a bad precedent regarding whether a minority entryist movement should be allowed to control an entire party?
 
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