From Politico (“Poll: 1-in-4 Sanders supporters won't vote for Clinton”):
One out of every four Bernie Sanders supporters said they will not support Hillary Clinton in the general election if she is the Democratic Party's standard bearer, according to the results of a McClatchy-Marist poll out Wednesday.
While 25 percent of Sanders backers said they would not support Clinton in November, 69 percent said they would vote for the former secretary of state.
Among Clinton supporters, just 14 percent said they would steer clear of voting for Sanders should he become the party's nominee, with 79 percent saying they would get behind the Vermont senator.
(source: www.politico.com/...)
This sounds bad; Clinton shedding up to 25% of the Sanders vote in November! TERRIBLE NEWS! Except that Politico — Tiger Beat on the Potomac — of course failed to put in any context in their quest to win the midday with a sensationalist “Democrats/Clinton are doomed” clickbait story.
Here is a poll from June 2008 (so with even less time before the November election for “reconciliation” or whatever you want to call it):
As Clinton closed her campaign Saturday, she urged the cheering crowd of thousands to support Obama in his run for the White House, saying she and supporters should "take our energy, our passion and our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama ... I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me."
Her endorsement was met with a scattering of boos and thumbs downs from the crowd at the National Building Museum in Washington.
In a CNN poll released Friday, 60 percent of Clinton supporters said they would vote for Obama, but 17 percent said they would vote for McCain and 22 percent, said they would not vote at all if Clinton were not the nominee.
(source: www.cnn.com/...)
Yeah, that was worse. 2008 was worse than 2016 in terms of vitriol and in terms of general election division. However paradoxically, the stark divide ideologically this time around (as opposed to 2008 when the two candidates were far more aligned in terms of policy) between the two candidates simply doesn’t translate into a voting population that is less willing to unify in November.
So don’t believe that hype, no matter how much Clinton supporters wants Sanders to drop out before all the states have a chance to vote, or how much Sanders supporters want to use sitting out November as emotional blackmail.
That hype is ginned up.
