Subject: The Bernie Sanders Surge Appears to be Over (FiveThirtyEight.com)
From: Adrienne Elrod <[email-masked]>
To: Adrienne Elrod <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 11:58:09 -0400

FYI -

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-bernie-sanders-surge-appears-to-be-over/

The Bernie Sanders Surge Appears To Be Over
<http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-bernie-sanders-surge-appears-to-be-over/>

FiveThirtyEight

8/11/15

Harry Enten

Not long ago, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was surging
<http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-to-make-of-the-bernie-sanders-surge/>.
In just a few months, the Vermont senator halved Hillary Clinton’s lead in
Iowa
<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/ia/iowa_democratic_presidential_caucus-3195.html>
 and moved to within shouting distance of her in New Hampshire
<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/nh/new_hampshire_democratic_presidential_primary-3351.html>.
But it’s probably time to change the verb tense. No longer is Sanders
surging. He has surged. From now on, picking up additional support will be
more of a slog.

Take a look at the monthly averages of Clinton’s and Sanders’s support in
live-interview polls taken in Iowa and New Hampshire since April (the month
that both Clinton and Sanders officially entered the race):

*IOWA*

*NEW HAMPSHIRE*

*MONTH*

CLINTON

SANDERS

CLINTON

SANDERS

July

55%

26%

45%

35%

June

51

29

47

30

May

57

16

62

18

April

59

9

51

13

Support for Sanders rocketed up in Iowa but has leveled off since June. The
story is nearly the same in New Hampshire. Sanders rose from June to July
in the Granite State, but his ascent slowed.1
<http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-bernie-sanders-surge-appears-to-be-over/#fn-1>

So what’s going on? Sanders is maxing out on gains simply because of
increased name recognition. Different pollsters ask about favorability and
name recognition in different ways — making comparisons tricky — but the
University of New Hampshire (UNH) polled Democrats in the state in April,
June and July. Sanders’s favorable rating went from 45 percent in April to
66 percent in June and then to 69 percent in July. The share of respondents
with a neutral opinion or no opinion of Sanders fell from 44 percent to 24
percent and then to 20 percent during that period. In other words, between
April and June, Sanders was picking up low hanging fruit: The liberal wing
of the Democratic Party learned about Sanders and liked him. But now, most
voters who are predisposed to like Sanders already know about him.

This phenomenon can be seen when we compare Sanders’s current position to
where Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren were polling in
April. As I wrote when he got into the race, Sanders had the potential to pick
up a lot of Warren supporters
<http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-president-announcement-liberal-alternative-2016-democratic-primary/>;
the two havenearly identical voting records
<ftp://voteview.com/junkord/SL01113D21_PRES.dat> in the Senate. Their
supporters can be defined as the anti-Clinton left. The combined vote
percentage for Sanders and Warren in the April UNH survey was 33 percent —
just about the level of support that Sanders alone had in the July UNH
poll. In other words, Sanders has won over the liberal flank of the
Democratic Party and hasn’t grown much beyond it.

Sanders seems to be suffering a similar fate in Iowa. While no pollster
surveyed the race in April, May, June and July, the three live-interview
polls from the first half of the year that included Warren as a choice gave
Warren and Sanders a combined vote percentage of 21 percent, on average.
That’s only slightly below where Sanders has recently been polling in the
Hawkeye State.

None of this is to say that Sanders won’t rise further or even win one or
both of these states. It’s just that, for now, the Sanders surge has slowed
(or stopped), and gaining more support will be harder for him than it has
been. To win in Iowa or New Hampshire, Sanders will have to appeal to
voters less predisposed to him than his current supporters.
Footnotes

1.      The only pollster to survey New Hampshire in both June and July —
theUniversity of New Hampshire
<http://www.wmur.com/blob/view/-/34538518/data/1/-/13mafar/-/Dem-GSP-8-4-PDF.pdf>
 — found that Sanders’s support went from 35 percent the first month to 36
percent the next, which, of course, is well within the margin of error. ^
<http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-bernie-sanders-surge-appears-to-be-over/#ss-1>

-- 

Adrienne K. Elrod
Spokesperson
Hillary For America
*www.hillaryclinton.com <http://www.hillaryclinton.com>*
@adrienneelrod