Exit polls in West Virginia show that many Bernie Sanders voters in this week’s primary plan to vote for Donald Trump in the general election. But the ironic part is that 39% of people who voted for Sanders in the Democratic primary would vote for Trump over Sanders, if Sanders is the Democratic nominee.
How did this happen? West Virginia is one of those southern states that was dominated by Democrats for years. Even now, 51% of voters are registered as Democrats compared to just 29% registered as Republicans. But West Virginia hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since Bill Clinton, and likely won’t for a long time to come.
I guess these people haven’t gotten around to changing their registration, even though they vote like Republicans. Another theory is that now that the GOP nomination is wrapped up, Republicans are trying to damage Clinton by voting for Sanders.
Whatever the reason, it is just another sign that our politics are really screwed up.
6 Comments
Certainly an argument to be made for a tighter primary schedule, or even a singular national primary. I do think our current schedule has a few perks, like getting attention to smaller states or deep blue/red states that may otherwise be ignored in the general and giving candidates time to spontaneously combust (or refuse to).
But then there are the downsides of other parties gaming the system and the absolute trudge of coverage, which make a single national primary sound great. But I suppose even then you’d have to worry about partisans skewing the vote in years like 2012 where an incumbent is running for re-election.
A lot of voters who come at the end of the primary process have no vote, as it is already decided. This is the biggest flaw of the process.
WV has been hit hard in the coal industry. In the past the Democratic party was a good ally for the few unions left unsuited. But the Democratic party is now seen as the destroyer of the industry. The fact that fracking played a bigger part of the downfall of the industry has been completely buried by the [jokingly referred to] liberal media and it isnt the Democrats that are pushing fracking down our environmental throat.
A large portion of the union members that are getting left by the roadside feel the Democratic party has left them there. while the issue of Global climate change has pushed the Democratic party to abandon them the GOP were the ones that drove the Fracking truck right over them, but the blame has been laid entirely at Clinton’said feet.
Sorry Carter but this dang fracking spell check is pain down in the mine where the sun don’t shine and I’m too tired to rewrite it.
[I fixed your spelling. –iron]
Or… WV Republicans may honestly think Sanders would ultimately be a better choice than Clinton and would rather, if it turns out a Democratic candidate gets elected in November, that the person on the ticket is Sanders rather than Clinton.
Crossing party lines in primaries is as close as we have available to IRV (Instant Runoff Voting) for now.
There’s still a chance that there will be more than two candidates this Fall. Not much, but a chance… and, if so, it won’t be Clinton, Sanders and Trump but the Democratic nominee, Trump and somebody yet to be named. Could happen…
Here’s one who would rather eat a fat squishy bug wrapped in tin foil than vote for Donald Trump, regardless of the Democrat they put out there, but I must admit to some real trepidation about the candidate he’s likely to face and starting to wonder whether it’s really a foregone conclusion given the current facts on the ground.
I’ll let Will McAvoy sum it up much better than I ever could.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik3JTaj21eo