I watched the debate pretty closely, and in my opinion, both candidates did pretty well and it was mostly an even contest. (Note: I am not committed to one or the other candidate, I happen to like them both.)
Sanders did very well in getting his message across, but he demonstrated weakness in foreign policy.
Clinton did a good job at addressing the alleged Wall Street ties and addressing the email issue.
But there is another way to answer the question. How much did each candidate strengthen their own support, and how much did each candidate do to convince undecided individuals to prefer them, especially those individuals in New Hampshire?
One way to asses that is to see what happens next Tuesday. As previously discussed, Sanders is expected to win the New Hampshire Primary by about 20%. If, in the end, he falls short of this, then perhaps Clinton did a better job of convincing undecideds to pick her. If Clinton does worse than 20% down, then perhaps Sanders did a better job of convincing undecideds to pick her.
Meanwhile, we have the online polls. Across a range of polls, Clinton gets number in the 10% – 20% range, and Sanders gets numbers in the 80-something% range. It has been suggested that Sanders supporters are better at gaming the on line polls than Clinton supporters. With numbers like this (8:2) that is almost certainly what is going on. Or, at least, it is a reasonable hypothesis. It is also possible that Republicans are clicking on Sanders because of the widespread belief among anti-Democrats that Sanders is the candidate the GOP prefers to run agains, even though the evidence for that is rather weak. In any event, an 8:2 (or, really, closer to 8.5-1.5) ratio does not accurately reflect the Democratic voter’s position. It is poll gaming of one kind or another. Does poll gaming indicate fishiness among Sanders supporters, with BerniBrah’s acting in their established somewhat obnoxious pattern? Or does it indicate a good GOP strategy? Or does it indicate that the Sanders campaign is doing something right? I suspect this is a question that will be addressable at a later time, not now.
And, to be clear, the political experts are generally in agreement that the debate was fairly even and Clinton addressed some concerns very well.
So putting this together, a few things things seem to emerge. First, realistically, there are two excellent campaigners running in this primary, each very able to handle themselves. Sanders has not done his homework on the foreign policy issues, as he really should have done by now. (One of his answers was almost GOP-esque, when he was asked about one country but spent a couple of minutes not addressing that country at all, and instead talked about a different country.) Having said that, I suspect that Sanders and Clinton supporters are different. Sanders is an insurgent candidate, and his campaign is following, in part, an unconventional path to the nomination. Last time that happened, the unconventional path worked. Sanders supporters hope this will happen again. But usually it doesn’t.
Someone who has been following the race very closely (full disclosure, a Sanders volunteer) recently told me she felt it was “easier to switch from being a Clinton supporter to a Sanders supporter than the other way around.” In a way this may be the definition of a (successful) insurgent campaign. The reason, she said, is because one of the main reasons to pick Clinton over Sanders is electability, and as Sanders demonstrates that this is not a issue, things change. We start out with Sanders the Socialist vs. Hillary the Hated. The Hillary the Hated persona is not going to change because the GOP has ingrained that as part of American political culture. But the Sanders the Socialist trope cold tear off the mask and become Sanders the Insurgent.
We’ll see.
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It seems to me that Sanders offers change (within the system) while Hillary offers business as usual. People clearly wanted change when they selected Obama, but got mostly gridlock and business as usual. They still want change and, other than the sad little militia in Oregon, are still working within the system. If Sanders is elected there will certainly be more gridlock, but it will be a step towards change.
With absolutely no “evidence” to either support or refute, I’m not sure that I would categorize the unusual online poll results as “gaming”.
Some research shows that people over 50 do not use social media specifically, and the internet in general, to the extent that younger people do. One supposed “study” indicated that only about 2% of people over the age of 65 use social media, for example.
My personal anecdote regarding my caucus precinct experience was that our location had a very significant number of older women present…. some with husbands, but quite a few that I would suppose were widows and were only accompanied by their elderly lady friends. They were overwhelmingly caucusing for Hillary. If these ladies are anything like my 82 year old mother, they aren’t on a computer much (or at all).
Randy, that could be. So, in effect, that would be an inadvertently biased poll.
But 8.5:1.5 is still a very very large number. The statistics of the distribution of supporters, even though the filter you suggest, would have to be huge. Then, if that is the case, one has to refer to the fact that young voters are really bad at turnout.
Clinton led every New Hampshire Democratic poll until early August. As recently as one month ago Clinton was still leading Sanders in some New Hampshire Polls, but Sanders has now led every New Hampshire poll conducted in the past 4 weeks.
Real Clear Politics has him with a 17.6 point lead with a high lead of +31 in the CNN poll and low lead of +9 in the Boston Globe poll.
I’ll go with this new Quinnipiac poll that came out today. http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2321 it puts Clinton at 44% to Sanders 42% in a nationwide poll. Clinton is losing ground quickly. A loss in NH (which is damn near a certainty) could cost her dearly.
No winner, but both are immeasurably superior to any possible Republican opponent. Whatever weaknesses Clinton and Sanders have, they acknowledge and attempt to address real problems. The losers were the moderators, who didn’t ask one question about climate change.