2016 FLASHBACK: Over 1 in 10 Bernie Primary Voters Voted for Trump in the General

By
Kambree Nelson
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With Joe Biden clearly moving into the 2020 Democratic party nominee role, Liz Peek writes:

The Bernie bros, still incensed that the Democratic National Committee torpedoed their man in 2016, are furious that party apparatchiks are blocking their advance once again. Assuming that Biden becomes the nominee, that discord does not bode well for Democrat turnout in November.

According to a report from Vox from August of 2017:

About 12 percent of Bernie Sanders supporters from the Democratic primary crossed party lines and voted for Donald Trump in the general election, a new analysis says.

In several key states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — the number of Sanders to Trump defectors were greater than Trump’s margin of victory, according to new numbers released Wednesday by UMass professor Brian Schaffner.

In an interview, Schaffner noted that in an election this close, any number of voting blocs could have proved decisive. And the analysis certainly doesn’t necessarily prove Sanders would have won — Schaffner also found that 34 percent of John Kasich’s GOP primary supporters backed Clinton in the general; perhaps more would have stayed in the Republican camp had Sanders been the Democrats’ nominee, or perhaps fewer of Hillary Clinton’s voters would have voted for Sanders. Then again, it also suggests some voters were in Sanders’s reach that were out of Clinton’s.

Moreover, defections from a primary to general election are common. More voters went from Hillary Clinton to John McCain in 2008 than went from Sanders to Trump in 2016; about 13 percent of Trump’s 2016 voters also voted for Barack Obama in 2012.