POLL: 15% of Sanders Supporters Plan to Vote For Donald Trump in November

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Mar 30, 2020

New polling from ABC suggests that Donald Trump is primed to win over a significant share of Bernie Sanders primary voters in the November general election, suggesting that some of Bernie’s Bros don’t intend to bend the knee to likely establishment Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

The poll reveals that 15% of self-identifying Bernie Sanders supporters already plan on voting for Trump in November. President Trump ultimately ended up winning the votes of 12% of 2016 Sanders supporters, suggesting he’s increased his appeal to the democratic socialist’s supporters.

Some centrist Democrats have expressed their personal distaste of Sanders(and some Gabbard) supporters on account of their perceived unwillingness to vote for the Democratic nominee, forgetting that it’s the obligation of American political candidates to win the votes of citizens who chose to support their opponents in primaries.

While Trump and Sanders are on opposite ends of the American political spectrum, they could be compared in a sense that they’re both considered political populists. Trump’s policy positions on trade, some foreign policy, and American manufacturing are closer to the Sanders’ views than Joe Biden’s reheated neoliberal political program.

Perhaps even more significantly, the poll shows that Biden gauges the lowest ever recorded “enthusiasm level” for a Democratic Presidential nominee. A paltry 24% of likely Biden voters describe themselves as “very enthusiastic” to vote for him in November.

With a voter base that seems lethargic in an unprecedented fashion, it’s possible that Joe Biden could go down as the most “low energy” major Presidential candidate in recent American political history.

The poll’s general election survey reveals a tight contest between Biden and Trump, with the former Vice President leading within the margin of error by 49% to 47%. Trump’s polling has improved significantly in recent weeks in ABC’s surveys, in part because of high public approval of the federal response to the Chinese coronavirus epidemic.

Biden seems to have largely disappeared from the national conversation in the wake of the historical epidemic, only sparsely appearing on public broadcasts in bizarre gaffe-filled livestreams from a converted recreation room in his Delaware home.