Sanders Does Better Than Both Trump And Clinton In Georgia–Can Extend Election Map For Democrats

georgia

Polls for several months have consistently demonstrated that Hillary Clinton would have difficulty in a general election, while Bernie Sanders would do much better. Head to head polling frequently showed Clinton losing to all candidates except Donald Trump, and now that Trump has probably clinched the GOP nomination, even that race has become a virtual tie. I have seen several Clinton supporters brag about polls showing that Clinton has a chance to flip Georgia. What they ignore is that this is not due to any great degree of support for Clinton. It is due to demographic changes in Georgia, and Bernie Sanders has an even better chance of carrying the state. From AJC polling (emphasis mine):

Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are locked in a statistical tie in Georgia, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll that laid bare the deep divide over the presidential race.

Trump’s 4-point lead over Clinton — he’s at 45 percent — is within the poll’s margin of error, meaning neither can confidently claim a state that’s voted for the GOP nominee since 1996. Sprinkled throughout are reminders of the challenges both face in capturing Georgia: dim voter enthusiasm, high unfavorability ratings and deep skepticism from voters.

Perhaps the most telling sign of all: Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders polled higher than both in one-on-one matchups, winning a potential contest with Trump 47 percent to 42 percent. Although Clinton seems poised to win her party’s nomination, the AJC poll is among a string of surveys bolstering Sanders’ case that he poses the bigger threat to Trump.

Sanders does better than Clinton both nationally and in the battleground states, along with showing a much better chance of expanding the playing field.It would place the Republican nominee at a disadvantage if Trump had to fight just to hold onto Georgia. In contrast, Clinton is vulnerable in several states which have voted Democratic in recent years.

As David Niose, legal director of the American Humanist Association, wrote at Salon, This is one weak nominee: Hillary Clinton’s problem isn’t Bernie Sanders. It’s Hillary Clinton.

No matter what you think about Hillary Clinton as the presidential primaries wind down, there is one undeniable fact that lingers in the background. Despite having had enormous advantages from the start of the campaign—no serious competition from within the party, solid support from national party leaders, a massive war chest and a nationwide grassroots network built over the course of decades in national politics—Clinton has struggled to put away a 74-year-old Jewish socialist who has had almost no establishment support.

Clinton lost to an inexperienced Barack Obama eight years ago, and is barely beating Sanders despite a system heavily rigged in her favor. She has been fortunate that Sanders has not used her major scandals against her, but we can be sure Trump will.

Seeing Sanders do better than Clinton in a general election match-up, despite her landslide victory in the Democratic primary, also shows how Democratic primary results are not representative of all potential Democratic voters. This might also indicate a decrease in support for Clinton and increase in support for Sanders since the date of the primary. While I would not normally like to see superdelegates decide the nominee, this is the time for them to intervene to correct the problems caused initially by the system giving such an advantage to Clinton. If the superdelegates system was initiated to protect against nominating an unelectable candidate, this very well could be such a situation. Plus we have not encountered a situation in which the leading candidate was as unethically unfit to be president as Hillary Clinton, along with currently being under FBI investigation (and not a security inquiry as Clinton falsely states).