Sanders not only won the Nevada Caucuses today, he won big. However that’s not what interested and encouraged me the most about them. What is most interesting is that the Nevada results bust more than one myth about the Bernie candidacy.
Myth #1: Bernie has a “ceiling” on his support & cannot command a majority.
The Nevada caucus structure was perfect to prove this false. (The New York Times explains how Nevada Caucus works)
A story was gaining traction out of Iowa and New Hampshire that a majority of Democrats support some other candidate than Bernie Sanders. This seemed plausible because if you added up the non-Bernie votes there, they amounted to quite a bit more than the Bernie votes. Therefore lots of scenarios were being spun about how Bernie couldn’t win a majority of delegates to clinch the nomination.
If this were true, the Nevada caucus structure of letting voters vote 3 separate times would have provided an ideal environment to reveal who that other consensus candidate might be. Instead what happened is that Sanders commanded a plurality of the votes (33.6%) on the first ballot and then picked up votes on the second and third ballots, ending up with 46.6% of the vote (as this chart from The New York Times shows). With only 3 candidates hitting the requisite threshold of 15% on the first ballot at many precincts (Sanders, Biden and Buttigieg), the rest of the voters who had supported Warren, Klobochar, Steyer, Gabbard or Yang were given 2 more chances to consolidate around Biden or Buttigieg in order to beat Sanders. It quickly became clear that Sanders was most of those other voters second choice. And once they knew their candidate was losing, they consolidated around Sanders while Biden or Buttigieg failed to gain much traction (although it is worth noting that Buttigieg picked up far more votes on 2nd and 3rd ballots than Biden did, but still not enough to get into second place).
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| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/22/us/elections/results-nevada-caucus.html |
Likewise more than one credible poll has shown that Sanders has enormous popularity and is indeed the most prevalent second choice of Democratic leaning voters. Unless Bloomberg’s attack ads on Sanders succeed in driving up Sanders’ negatives (something that doesn’t seem to have happened so far) this means that as candidates drop out the vote will consolidate around Sanders, not some mythical centrist favorite.
Myth #2 Medicare for All hurts Sanders and fear of losing health benefits can be used to scare voters away from Sanders. Results of precincts on the Nevada strip clearly show that many if not most members of the Culinary Workers Union voted for him despite their Union’s fear tactics about losing healthcare coverage.
Meanwhile, for once widespread criticism is being directed at Chris Matthews of MSNBC for comparing Bernie’s win in Nevada to Hitler’s rolling tanks into France.
Bernie Sanders leaves Nevada in a very strong position to win South Carolina and then California, Texas, Virginia and other states on Super Tuesday.