If left-wing populism is growing, Bernie Sanders will crush Hillary Clinton
It's actually quite simple: Voter apathy in the United States is so extreme that even a tiny movement can generate extremely powerful results.
But it can't be microscopic and extremely unpopular.
In the first primary in the 2008 cycle, Dennis Kucinich received the vote of only 0.05% of registered voters in New Hampshire. So 99.95% of New Hampshire voters did not think Dennis Kucinich was worth voting for.
While still running for President, Dennis Kucinich received the vote of only 0.0001% of registered voters in South Carolina. So 99.9999% of South Carolina voters did not think he was worth voting for.
I know what you're thinking: Kucinich didn't have money...he also didn't have a small but significant movement of fed up Americans who would passionately work for him.
But someone else did: Ron Paul. He was going to lead a revolution of right-wing populism.
Ron Paul supporters continually made the case that Americans were fed up with the status quo, and were looking for a new radical voice that would dramatically change the government, one that went against both establishment Republicans and establishment Democrats. They had a constant stream of anecdotal or out-of-context evidence that their movement was growing and would soon rock the political world.
They also had an excuse: "Big Corrupt Money" was working against them, and if they could just get a grassroots movement of volunteers and money, they'd finally break through and we'd have a Ron Paul Revolution. They finally got their wish: The grassroots movement took off and Ron Paul even received a $6 million money bomb in ONE DAY.
People freaked out, they became convinced that this was their moment, they finally had money to compete. "It's happening" became a massively hyped movement that they were really going to win.

They had finally run out of excuses for their past loses. Ron Paul started a wave of professional ads in primary states, he got his message out just as well as any other campaign. But what happened? People didn't care. They saw his ads, his debate performances, and shrugged their shoulders going "Meh, not really my thing." Ron Paul supporters had deluded themselves about the popularity of their movement. Despite having a first-rate campaign, boatloads of money, media access, and a true grassroots movement...they couldn't change the fact that not a lot of people really wanted a Ron Paul revolution.
TV ads don't sway voters, big money doesn't sway voters, overly aggressively grass roots activists don't sway voters. People actually believing your message is what convinces someone to go drive to the polls.
All Bernie Sanders needs is as little as 7% of eligible voters in a few states to believe his message and take a very simple stroll to their local polls on election day.
If you can't get such an extremely tiny portion of Americans to simply cast a ballot, then there simply is no growing left-wing populist movement, in fact it would mean it's very unpopular.
Follow me below the fold and I'll show you how ridiculously easy it is for Bernie Sanders to win, as long as left-wing populism is ACTUALLY a growing and popular movement.
First off, there is no denying Bernie Sanders is the foremost authentic left-wing populist of 2016. No one else even comes close and anything Hillary Clinton (or anyone else for that matter) could offer will come off as a lesser imitation.
If you believe the message, there is no substitute for Bernie Sanders.
Fortunately for Bernie Sanders, he doesn't even need a majority of Americans to win the nomination, in fact he only needs a very small amount of Americans. If he wins or even comes close to winning in New Hampshire, and then wins in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton's campaign would implode. Even lower voter participation states would follow and he'd need less and less of the state's residents to win contests, with smooth sailing to the nomination and as I stated in the title: Bernie Sanders would crush Hillary Clinton.
New Hampshire 2016 Primary.
New Hampshire has 1,326,813 residents. 1,054,816 are adults. They have a 98% citizenship rate.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/...
New Hampshire allows felons to vote right when they get out of prison. In fact New Hampshire has one of the lowest incarceration rates in the United States (only a quarter of Louisiana's rate) http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Despite New Hampshire being quite a friendly voter registration state, let's assume due to other minor issues or residency issues, only 90% of the adults (and 71% of residents) are eligible to register.
http://sos.nh.gov/...
That's 949,334 people who are ABLE to vote for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary as long as they register as undeclared or Democratic.
The latest numbers are 767,383 registered voters in New Hampshire.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
In a very competitive and high-turn out primary, Hillary Clinton won with 112,404 votes.
For an outright majority with a 2008-high turnout model, one would need approximately 141,500 votes.
So, for Bernie Sanders to win the New Hampshire primary with Hillary Clinton 2008 levels of support, Bernie Sanders ONLY needs to convince 11.8% of eligible voters to vote for him.
Want to assume all other candidates will drop out, but Clinton vs Sanders will still have the high turnout of 2008? Well then he still would only need 14.9% of eligible voters to win an outright majority.
But, New Hampshire doesn't decide the nomination. So Bernie Sanders only needs a respectable showing in New Hampshire, much less than even the paltry 11%, to continue the challenge into the next round of states, such as South Carolina.
After only achieving a respectable showing in New Hampshire, his path to the nomination gets MUCH EASIER.
South Carolina 2016
Using the same data sources as above, you can see South Carolina has 2,722,280 registered voters. Because of South Carolina's lengthy history of voter disenfranchisement, we'll stick with only registered voters considered by the state to be valid.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
To achieve an outright majority (assuming turnout is as high as 2008), Bernie would need 266,234 votes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Bernie Sanders would only need 9.7% of registered voters to win an outright majority!
However, considering only 50,000 South Carolina residents are barred from voting because of a criminal conviction, and they also have a 98% citizenship rate, it's likely that overall their numbers could theoretically be close to New Hampshire as far as possible voter registration.
http://www.aclusouthcarolina.org/...
If you were to be optimistic, then you can see scenarios where Bernie Sanders only needs 7% of voters to win South Carolina.
In primary states that follow, he'd need an even lower percentage to win.
Conclusion
With growing grass roots activism and free DVR making TV ads nearly useless...big money, establishment support and other old measures of campaign strength are actually not that important.
A significant portion of kossacks are convinced left-wing populism is growing, surely at least 7%-11% actually believe the message. If left-wing populists on DailyKos are right, Bernie Sanders will easily win. If Bernie Sanders doesn't win, it shows very convincingly that Americans actually are a lot more conservative than much of DailyKos would like to pretend, and we have to build coalitions of moderates and liberals to win in the Barack Obama model by highlighting not only liberal ideas but centrist ideas as well.
Personally, I think left-wing populists will fail to even get 7% to believe their message. But I would LOVE to be proven wrong.
So go ahead, prove me wrong. But if you fail, don't blame me and don't blame Hillary, just realize you, like Ron Paul fans realized, that you were so incredibly unpopular you couldn't even get 7% to believe your message.