Welcome to the Bernie News Roundup Live Blog & Open Thread for the West Virginia Primary Results/News. In the comments below I and some other misfit rebels will do our best to provide news updates, commentary, tweets, media, results, opinion, analysis, and any number of other relevant (and not so) information. Please feel free to join in the fun, though as always site rules apply!
Hillary Clinton supporters repeatedly ask me why Bernie Sanders is still running for president. It’s true: The delegate math is squarely against him, and Clinton is almost certain to win the Democratic nomination by a fairly wide margin. But Sanders still has a lot of supporters, and he has a message that happens to be resonating. Case in point: West Virginia, which votes today and where Sanders is likely to win.
Just two West Virginia polls have been released in the last month, but both showed Sanders with a modest edge. The FiveThirtyEight polls-only model forecasts a 7-percentage-point Sanders win, while the polls-plus model gives him a 3-point edge.
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West Virginia also looks like a strong state for Sanders demographically, with few nonwhite voters. A demographic model my colleague Nate Silver released in late April projected Sanders to carry the state by 15 percentage points. That would be his biggest win in a primary outside his home state of Vermont and its neighbor New Hampshire. ..
The other key pro-Sanders factor in West Virginia: It holds a semiclosed primary, meaning that unaffiliated voters can take part in either party’s primary. Sanders has done exceedingly well among voters who identify as independent,1 according to exit polls. Just last week in Indiana, for example, he lost among self-identified Democrats by 6 percentage points and won self-identified independents by 44 points.
A somewhat surprising dynamic is playing out in West Virginia. The state fits a demographic profile that has favored Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary race given its large share of white voters. But this is coal country, and Sanders has staked out a reputation as one of the most progressive environmentalists in American politics. In his climate-change platform, Sanders calls on the U.S. to “act boldly to move our energy system away from fossil fuels.” On the surface, that might seem like an alienating stand in a state where fossil fuels have long played a key role in the local economy. But polls show Sanders ahead of Hillary Clinton.
Sanders and Clinton have both put forward plans aimed at revitalizing communities hard hit by a loss of coal jobs. But in the end, voters may be swayed more by perception than policy. Clinton has faced a hostile reception in the state following her comments that “we are going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” a statement she has since said was taken out of context. Sanders and his populist message of tackling economic inequality has gained more traction. If the Vermont senator wins the Democratic primary, it might be because his political image was more appealing to voters than Clinton’s. Even if that is the case, a victory for Sanders would also show that Democratic candidates can put forward aggressive plans to scale back fossil-fuel production and still win votes in coal country.
Eight years ago, after her path to the Democratic presidential nomination had seemingly run out, Hillary Clinton found salvation in West Virginia. The state's still-dominant Democratic voters gave her a 41-point landslide victory, with wins in every county. At a triumphant rally that quoted John Denver's "Country Roads," Clinton recast herself as an election winner, a Democrat who could expand the map — not alienate loyal voters.
"In light of our overwhelming victory here in West Virginia, I want to send a message to all those who are making up their minds," Clinton said. "The White House is won in the swing states. And I am winning the swing states.”
The legacy of West Virginia loomed for red state Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), who quickly endorsed Clinton for 2016. Yet today, Clinton is expected to lose the state, having moved elsewhere as Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) barnstormed, and gone dark on the air, as she did in Indiana. In every West Virginia poll, the candidate who won every county last time is trailing the democratic socialist from Vermont.
Larry Cohen, the former Communications Workers of America president and a close Sanders ally, said that the real rub between the candidates was in trade policy. "A big part of the industry in West Virginia is metallurgical coal," he said. "Bernie's saying, let's not move the steel industry to China. You add to that his commitment to transportation infrastructure and he's got much more to say to voters in West Virginia."
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A Sanders triumph Tuesday night in West Virginia would give the senator's supporters one of their biggest 2016 upsets, and the biggest turnarounds in a state that backed Clinton. With the Republican primary functionally over, a big defeat for Clinton might kick off weeks of negative coverage, while Sanders cops her 2008 message and insists he is the more electable candidate.
More than 100,000 West Virginians had already voted in the primary election as today’s election day loomed, a number that dwarfs any other primary election in the 14-year history of West Virginia’s early voting program.
Across the state’s 55 counties, 100,962 people voted early, according to Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, while an additional 5,252 voted by absentee ballot, for a total of 106,214 ballots already cast. That’s nearly 9 percent of the approximately 1.2 million registered voters in West Virginia. It’s also nearly eight times more than the number who voted early in the 2002 primary, the first year early voting was an option, although turnout is always lower in nonpresidential years, like 2002. About half the ballots this year — 50.3 percent — have come from registered Democrats, according to numbers provided by Tennant’s office.
That’s slightly higher than what might be expected, as about 47 percent of all registered voters are registered Democrats. About 34 percent of early voters were registered Republicans, a number, as with the Democrats, that is higher than the about 30 percent of all registered voters who are registered Republicans.
Meanwhile, voters who don’t identify with a party make up about 20 percent of the electorate, but only about 11 percent of early voters. Those voters could have voted on either a Democratic or Republican ballot, and Tennant’s office did not have data on which ballots unaffiliated voters chose.
Hillary Clinton is the choice of most West Virginia Democratic political leaders who have a role in choosing the party’s presidential nominee.
Six of West Virginia’s eight “super delegates” will be supporting the former secretary of state, who has a big lead among pledged delegates, when they cast their votes at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July. West Virginia has 37 delegates to the convention, with 29 of those awarded based on the results of the Tuesday presidential primary.
The remaining eight, the super delegates, are party leaders who are not bound by the voters’ choice next week. West Virginia’s Democratic super delegates are Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, Sen. Joe Manchin, party chairwoman Belinda Biafore, vice-chairman Chris Regan, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, state Treasurer John Perdue, Charleston lawyer Pat Maroney, and Elaine Harris, a union leader for the Communications Workers of America.
Six are supporting Clinton, barring some unforeseen and highly unlikely circumstances. Regan is supporting Sanders. Harris has not publicly announced her support and did not respond to several phone and email messages.
Hillary Clinton holds a 12-point lead over Bernie Sanders nationally, but in a hypothetical match-up against Donald Trump, Sanders does much better than the current Democratic front-runner.
As Ted Cruz and John Kasich exited the Republican primary race last week — making Trump the party's presumptive nominee — Clinton and Sanders have used Trump's candidacy to argue that they would be in the best position to defeat him in the general election in November.
When respondents in our NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll were asked whether they would cast a vote for Trump or either of the Democratic candidates still in the race, Sanders is the favorite over Trump by 13 points.
Clinton also beats Trump, but the race is decidedly closer — 49 percent to 44 percent. These results are according to the latest from the NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll conducted online from May 2 through May 8 of 12,714 adults including 11,089 registered voters.
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Though blacks, Hispanics, women and moderate voters consistently support either Democratic candidate when faced with Trump as the Republican alternative, there are two significant groups that Sanders wins over by much larger margins than Clinton and help him beat Trump by double digits: Republicans under 30 and Independents who do not lean toward either party.
There is no question that Sanders has consistently dominated Clinton among Democratic voters under 30 throughout the primary season. When analyzing the data from our weekly tracking poll, however, it appears his appeal among millennial voters crosses party lines as well.
About 30 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners under 30 would vote for Sanders over Trump. The support Sanders gains among young Republican is surprising as research has consistently shown that party identification is the strongest predictor of vote choice. When faced with a Clinton-Trump ticket, 18 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters under 30 would support Clinton; 78 percent would support Trump.
There is a billionaire leading in polls in West Virginia who portrays himself in often colorful language as an outsider businessman and job creator not beholden to political donors—and his last name isn’t Trump.
Jim Justice, who made his fortune running his family’s coal and agriculture businesses, is ahead in a three-way race in the Democratic primary for governor heading into Tuesday’s election. Like Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Justice is benefiting from a deep distrust of establishment politicians.
In a poll released Thursday, 32% of likely Democratic voters said they would vote for Mr. Justice. Meanwhile, 27% said they would back former U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin, who is from a West Virginia political family, and 23% said they would support state Sen. Jeff Kessler, a longtime Senate member and current minority leader. Nearly one in five voters said they were still undecided.
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Kessler is running as an outright progressive, linking himself and his policies to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is drawing support among likely Democratic voters.
Mr. Kessler said his 19 years in the state Senate make him the only candidate with experience solving problems in government. He said the state should raise taxes, including an additional $1 per pack increase in the tax on cigarettes that he says would generate $130 million annually.
He dismissed Mr. Justice as a candidate “manufactured by the Manchin machine” and Mr. Goodwin as a “nice fella” who lacks the right experience. He said he is hoping to draw the same young voters who are backing Mr. Sanders.
“I’m confident they’re going to get on the #YessKessExpress as they feel the Bern,” he said, invoking a hashtag he has been using on Twitter