The Democratic race for the presidential nomination looks to have fundamentally changed, but you wouldn’t know it from the headlines. After winning seven out of the last eight contests, including last night’s 14-point win in Wisconsin, a new poll has Bernie Sanders surging ahead of Hillary Clinton nationally in the race to be the Democratic nominee.
A McClatchy-Marist poll released on Wednesday shows Sanders beating Clinton 49% to 47% nationally. In addition to winning his solid base of youth support, Sanders also wins among Latinos, independents, liberals, and the unmarried. But the media doesn’t seem to let the real story get in the way of a misleading headline.
Many news sites, including Politico, have instead opted to bury the changing dynamics of the race behind click-bait headlines such as “1-in-4 Sanders supporters won’t vote for Clinton.” This is not technically inaccurate, as it is one finding from the McClatchy-Marist poll. But we are a long way off before people have to make up their minds about who they will or will not support in the general election. The choice voters have in front of them right now is who to support in the Democratic primary.
When it comes to that primary, it looks like voters nationally are in the midst of a dramatic shift toward supporting Sanders. This shift fits the pattern of his double digit wins in seven of the last eight contests, including — Wisconsin (57%), Idaho (78%), Utah (79%), Alaska (82%), Hawaii (70%), Washington (73%), and Democrats Abroad (69%). After already demonstrating that he can win incredibly diverse states like Hawaii (the least white state in the union) and Alaska (the 7th least white state in the union), it is not surprising that Sanders has started to capture Latinos in the latest poll.
The race has changed, and at this moment Hillary Clinton should no longer be considered the inevitable nominee. However, despite its usual appetite for horse race numbers, the mainstream media is doing everything it can to make sure that is not the headline we see. Not only will the revolution not be televised, it will not even be blogged about if the establishment media has its way.