Sanders wins Iowa

[_honorentheos]

The author's point was that Sanders is following a similar path to winning major party nomination for president when neither represent the majority views of the respective parties. That path being they are leveraging solid plurality support against a divided center to create majorities without majority support.

If I had a contention with that premise, it would be the Democratic primary process differs in two fundamental ways that make it more difficult for Sanders to pull that off. The first is Trump was able to take home all the delegates from each state he won even if that win was marginal. Democrats distribute delegates so no one can run away with the primary by relying on a bunch of 30% wins. The second is Sanders is facing a process that almost certainly won't reward him if he can't win an outright majority going in to the convention. His life-long animosity toward the Democratic establishment is likely to work against his ability to form a winning coalition to take home the nomination on a brokered second ballot with the super delegates weighing in.

But the point is still valid even if flawed.

The intended effect of the sentence you globbed onto is to say the 2020 Presidential election could be between two candidates who don't represent the majority of Americans (which most people feel is true most of the time) nor the historic establishment identity of either major party. Much of the article is built on the idea the two party system is failing us and this issue is being used to illustrate both the effects of having a dominant two party system as well as consequences of their failures.

[_EAllusion]

The author's point was that Sanders is following a similar path to winning major party nomination for president when neither represent the majority views of the respective parties.

To that point, Sanders wins in head-to-heads with every single other Democratic candidate. In most cases, he destroys them. He is the closest to representing the majority of the party in that sense. He is the consensus candidate if it was down to Sanders and a take your pick of other Democratic candidates. Of course, in a crowded primary with divided support no one candidate is going to represent the "majority," but Sanders is about as good of a coalition candidate for Democratic views as there are. Warren is probably better as she draws more moderate support, but voters are terrified that she'll lose a general election and "electability is important" is a view.

The author on this point is borrowing from a conventional understanding that is just wrong.

The intended effect of the sentence you globbed onto is to say the 2020 Presidential election could be between two candidates who don't represent the majority of Americans (which most people feel is true most of the time) nor the historic establishment identity of either major party. Much of the article is built on the idea the two party system is failing us and this issue is being used to illustrate both the effects of having a dominant two party system as well as consequences of their failures.

The sentence is trying to say extremist on one side and extremist on the other. It slides into describing Trump as a fascist using the preferred euphemism of the day to do that. Hence my comment.

[_honorentheos]

The author's point was that Sanders is following a similar path to winning major party nomination for president when neither represent the majority views of the respective parties.

To that point, Sanders wins in head-to-heads with every single other Democratic candidate. In most cases, he destroys them. He is the closest to representing the majority of the party in that sense. He is the consensus candidate if it was down to Sanders and a take your pick of other Democratic candidates. Of course, in a crowded primary with divided support no one candidate is going to represent the "majority," but Sanders is about as good of a coalition candidate for Democratic views as there are. Warren is probably better as she draws more moderate support, but voters are terrified that she'll lose a general election and "electability is important" is a view.

The author on this point is borrowing from a conventional understanding that is just wrong.

That's a complete reframing of the argument away from representation of the Democrat party to current polling where as near as I can tell there is only Trump v. "X" polling to use to make the comparison you do about head-to-head competitions rather than percent of the democratic vote the progressives v. centrists are pulling.

As noted in the article, the two main progressive candidates hold a plurality of voters among Democrats in polling while the three (four with Bloomberg) centrists represent a clear majority of Democrats in their first preferences so it isn't asking the question you decided to answer.

The intended effect of the sentence you globbed onto is to say the 2020 Presidential election could be between two candidates who don't represent the majority of Americans (which most people feel is true most of the time) nor the historic establishment identity of either major party. Much of the article is built on the idea the two party system is failing us and this issue is being used to illustrate both the effects of having a dominant two party system as well as consequences of their failures.

The sentence is trying to say extremist on one side and extremist on the other. It slides into describing Trump as a fascist using the preferred euphemism of the day to do that. Hence my comment.

Ride that hobby horse into the rodeo, cowboy, ride!

[_honorentheos]

EA, I found the you.gov poll you were describing that came out last week showing a Sanders head-to-head win over every other Democratic candidate. You.gov is an online polling service that people opt in to be selected from in order to participate in their polls. Good or bad, it's a self-selecting polling service with a strong lean towards internet users who are interested in being asked to participate in a poll. It's the only poll I've seen that has a head-to-head series of questions asked of Democrat and independent voters who claim they will participate in a Democratic primary.

Yet looking at more traditional polling on realclearpolitics.com, you don't see signs of this in any of the Trump v. X polls, or the state-level primary polls where the lead is anything like the You.gov poll suggests.

If the question is how well does a candidate represent the majority views of the Democratic party, I don't think the you.gov online poll represents the Democratic party in it's polling panel pool given it's methodology seems incredibly likely to draw heavily from online Bernie supporter types. Unless there is something in their methodology that shows how they can control for voter cadres who are likely to vote but aren't represented by self-selecting online poll seekers?

[_EAllusion]

EAllusion, I found the you.gov poll you were describing that came out last week showing a Sanders head-to-head win over every other Democratic candidate. You.gov is an online polling service that people opt in to be selected from in order to participate in their polls. Good or bad, it's a self-selecting polling service with a strong lean towards internet users who are interested in being asked to participate in a poll.

I think you leave out enough information here to be misleading about yougov (and other online) polling firms' sampling methodology. It is not simply selection bias at work like a Twitter poll. It's a B level pollster that performs about as well as Quinnipiac or PPP or Gallup.

Yet looking at more traditional polling on realclearpolitics.com, you don't see signs of this in any of the Trump v. X polls, or the state-level primary polls where the lead is anything like the You.gov poll suggests.

Trump vs. X polls aren't Democratic primary polls and what Democrat primary voters prefer is not necessarily what the public prefers.

If the question is how well does a candidate represent the majority views of the Democratic party, I don't think the you.gov online poll represents the Democratic party in it's polling panel pool given it's methodology seems incredibly likely to draw heavily from online Bernie supporter types. Unless there is something in their methodology that shows how they can control for voter cadres who are likely to vote but aren't represented by self-selecting online poll seekers?

The vast majority of voters don't have ideological views at all, so we have to be careful about what you mean by "views." When it comes to who Democrats best feel represents what they want in a candidate, all the evidence we have indicates that Sanders, rather than being an outlier, is the closest to a consensus answer. In addition to head to heads, Sanders owns the highest favorability rating among Democrats as well. Rather than Sanders winning because he represents a small coalition against a divided majority, the crowded primary is actually hurting him. By contrast, someone like Buttigieg is an outlier. If you are someone who thinks whomever tries to campaign as a moderate is by definition the most representative of the median, this is might be a surprising fact, but it shouldn't be.

[_EAllusion]

Several of my coworkers today were discussing how Bloomberg was considering making Hillary Clinton - that witch - a VP candidate. None of them seemed to appreciate this was a news-grabbing stunt, but they did decide to discuss the eerie fact that dozens of people who have crossed Hillary have died in mysterious circumstances like "committing suicide by shooting themselves 5 times in the head." After a brief digression in mutual Clinton kill list paranoia, these self-imagined liberal Democrats all agreed they're voting Sanders as a contrast to this corrupt behavior.

What's their "views?" Hell if I know, and I doubt they do either, but I get the sense that they like Sanders because they see him as having high integrity. That's a view, and it is one a lot of Democrats care a lot about.

When it comes to policy positions, Sanders stances are generally already fairly popular among Democrats, but if Sanders gets the nom, and especially if he were to win, Democrats will just adjust their responses to opinion polls to say they agree with him even larger numbers. Most people don't have actual thought out opinions on these things. They respond to whatever their chosen leaders say they're for.

[_honorentheos]

I think you leave out enough information here to be misleading about yougov (and other online) polling firms' sampling methodology. It is not simply selection bias at work like a Twitter poll. It's a B level pollster that performs about as well as Quinnipiac or PPP or Gallup.

They apparently make their bread and butter selling data about consumer preferences by putting out a boatload of polls to their opt-in consumer pollsters who get paid for completing a certain number of polls. They are...interesting.

The vast majority of voters don't have ideological views at all, so we have to be careful about what you mean by "views." When it comes to who Democrats best feel represents what they want in a candidate, all the evidence we have indicates that Sanders, rather than being an outlier, is the closest to a consensus answer.

More like Sanders has sufficient current name recognition that when the choice isn't a person's first pick, he's the person they have heard of. Like you say, people's behavior isn't ideologically consistent and not logical.

Looking at people's first choices, the totals lining up behind centrist exceeds those lining up behind the progressive/socialists. As the field narrows and the centrist option to Sanders is limited to one or two whose name becomes better known, those ideological inconsistencies will shake out differently if current candidates ideology support is any indicator.

There aren't head to head polls. There is a poll.

[_EAllusion]

NBC/WSJ has a poll out showing Sanders crushing Bloomberg and Buttigieg by approximately the same margins as the Yougov poll in hypothetical head to heads. They didn't poll Biden or Warren for some inexplicable reason.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... -Poll.html

[_EAllusion]

Looking at people's first choices, the totals lining up behind centrist exceeds those lining up behind the progressive/socialists.

That doesn't mean anything. You cannot infer from this fact that Democratic primary voters therefore by majority prefer the centrists. It doesn't work like that. The head to head matchups should've been clear evidence why. This post reads as you just saying, "I like the moderates."

[_honorentheos]

The way it's intended to read is Sanders benefits from name recognition right now.