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In the United States,Sanders–Trump voters, also known asBernie–Trump voters, are Americans who voted forBernie Sanders in the2016 or2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries (or both), but who subsequently voted forRepublican Party nomineeDonald Trump in the general election. In the2016 U.S. presidential election, these voters composed an estimated 6%–12% of Sanders supporters.[1] At least another 12% of Sanders supporters did not vote forDemocratic Party nomineeHillary Clinton,[2] but also did not vote for Trump.
The extent to which these voters were decisive in Trump's 2016 victory and their effect on the2020 U.S. presidential election have been a subject of debate. Compared to other Sanders voters, Sanders–Trump voters are less likely to identify as Democrats and have moreconservative views on social and gender issues.
TheCooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), an election survey of about 50,000 people, found that 12% of Sanders voters voted for Trump in 2016.[3] In the states ofMichigan,Pennsylvania, andWisconsin, the number of Sanders–Trump voters was more than two times Trump's margin of victory in those states.[4] Some analysts, such asEconomist data journalistG. Elliott Morris, have argued that these voters disproportionately impacted the 2016 election.[1][5] Others, including political scientistBrian Schaffner, who served as a co-Principal Investigator in the CCES survey,[6] 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.[2][3] By every estimate,Obama-Trump voters—voters who had previously voted forBarack Obama but voted for Trump in 2016—vastly outnumber Sanders-to-Trump voters, accounting for about 14% of Trump's total vote.
The 2016 VOTER survey conducted byYouGov, which interviewed 8,000 respondents in July and December 2016, found that 12% of those who preferred Sanders in the primary preferred Trump in the general election. The RAND Presidential Election Panel Survey, which interviewed the same group of around 3,000 respondents six times during the campaign, found that 6% of those who reported supporting Sanders in March reported supporting Trump in November. A November 2016 poll conducted byABC News andThe Washington Post only days before the general election showed 8% of Sanders supporters intended to vote for Trump or had voted for him.[7] Unlike the CCES survey, these surveys did not validate the turnout of those surveyed,[1] while CCES was limited to examining only voters whose participation in both the primaries and general election could be verified via voter file data, which excluded those who voted in caucuses or party-run primaries.
In an interview withVox, Schaffner highlighted the fact that Sanders–Trump voters were much less likely to identify as Democrats than Sanders voters who voted for Clinton or a third-party candidate.[2] According to Schaffner, about half of the voting bloc identified themselves as Republicans or independents.[4] Data from the VOTER survey showed that only 35% of Sanders–Trump voters voted for Democratic incumbentBarack Obama in the2012 election; in contrast, 95% of Sanders-Clinton voters voted for Obama in 2012.[1]
Compared to average Democratic Party voters, Sanders–Trump voters were much moreconservative on racial and social issues. Over 40% of Sanders–Trump voters disagreed that white people have advantages, compared to less than 10% of Sanders voters who voted for Clinton.[2] Compared to the average Sanders voter, Sanders–Trump voters tend to bewhite and older. The CCES survey showed that only between 17% and 18% of Sanders–Trump voters identified themselves as ideologicallyliberal, with the rest either identifying as moderate or conservative.[2] In the VOTER survey, Sanders–Trump voters rated minority groups less favorably than Sanders-Clinton voters; this includedLatinos,Muslims andLGBT people.[1] According to both the CCES and VOTER surveys, Sanders–Trump voters' views on trade policy are largely similar to typical Democrats, despite Sanders' relative opposition to free trade deals.[1][2]
Jeff Stein ofVox suggested that many Sanders–Trump voters may have beenReagan Democrats who were white and pro-union.[2] Political scientistJohn M. Sides suggested that many Sanders–Trump voters were unlikely to support Clinton in the first place.[1] Writing inRealClearPolitics, Tim Chapman, executive director of conservative advocacy groupHeritage Action, suggested that both Trump and Sanders had strongpopulist appeal, especially to working-class voters in theheartland, despite their starkly different policies.[8] 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.[4]
Sanders–Trump voters were cited as a potential deciding factor in the2020 United States presidential election. According to a February 2020NBC 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 nomineeJoe Biden in the general election depended on Sanders' efforts to demonstrate his support for Biden.[4]
There was no consensus between pre-election forecasters on the potential effect of Sanders–Trump voters on the 2020 election. In March 2019, Grace Sparks ofCNN suggested that Sanders–Trump voters were unlikely to be significant in 2020, pointing to early polling which showed little overlap in support between Sanders and Trump.[7] According to a March 2020 ABC News/Washington Post poll, 15% of Sanders voters (corresponding to 6% of leaned Democrats) planned to vote for Trump, while 80% planned to vote for Biden.[9] A March 2020Morning 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.[10] Citing exit polls on the2020 South Carolina Democratic presidential primary,Washington Examiner columnistTimothy P. Carney suggested that Sanders voters were demographically similar to Trump voters.[11]
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