Sanders–Trump voters

Studies The Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), an election survey of about 50,000 people, found that 12% of Sanders voters voted for Trump in 2016. In the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the number of Sanders–Trump voters was more than two times Trump's margin of victory in those states. Others, including political scientist Brian Schaffner, who served as a co-Principal Investigator in the CCES survey, have said that Trump's margin of victory was small enough that Sanders–Trump voters were merely one voting bloc out of many that could have decided the outcome, and that "defections" between a primary and a general election are quite common. Unlike the CCES survey, these surveys did not validate the turnout of those surveyed, Data from the VOTER survey showed that only 35% of Sanders–Trump voters voted for Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in the 2012 election; in contrast, 95% of Sanders–Clinton voters voted for Obama in 2012. In 2020, Schaffner suggested that Sanders' appeal to Sanders–Trump voters in 2016 was due to his outsider status, his populist policies, and his targeting of issues which affected groups of people Trump attempted to court in his 2016 campaign. == 2020 election ==

Sanders–Trump voters were cited as a potential deciding factor in the 2020 United States presidential election. According to a February 2020 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, about 7% of respondents who said they were enthusiastic about or comfortable with Sanders in the 2020 election voted for Trump in 2016. In March 2020, Schaffner suggested that if Sanders were the Democratic nominee in the 2020 general election, Sanders would be able to target some but not all of those who voted Sanders–Trump in 2016. Philippe Reines, a longtime Clinton adviser, suggested that whether this group of voters would vote for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the general election depended on Sanders' efforts to demonstrate his support for Biden. A March 2020 Morning Consult poll showed that although Sanders supporters were less likely to vote for Biden than the average Democrat, they were also less likely to "defect" to Trump compared to 2016. Citing exit polls on the 2020 South Carolina Democratic presidential primary, Washington Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney suggested that Sanders voters were demographically similar to Trump voters. == See also ==