Hillary Clinton supporters have portrayed Bernie Sanders's supporters as a cult thing; that Bernie is the object of their obsession.
If any one of these is accurate, I would say it's the opposite.
People living off the 1990s, calling themselves Democrats, and voting to nominate Hillary Clinton are the ones lots closer to embracing the object of their obsession. (That is, if any side is doing such a thing.)
Bernie Sanders isn't the object of anyone's obsession. His support is due to his platform.
That is the reason why 17-/18-29 voters have an extraordinary level of support for him. He reached 80 percent support from this age group (and they're the first to vote Democratic in general elections; the only one to back John Kerry in 2004) in not only Iowa (84 percent) and New Hampshire (83 percent), as well as Nevada (82 percent), but in these double-digit, electoral-vote-rich states: Illinois (86 percent), Pennsylvania (83 percent), Ohio (81 percent), Michigan (81 percent), and Wisconsin (82 percent).
My source is CNN's site. There were no exit polls on Washington, Arizona, and Minnesota. Given that Bernie Sanders carried Washington's and Minnesota's caucuses with more than 60 percent of their votes, had exit polls been conducted they would likely show that he reached carriage of 80 percent of those states's 17-/18-29 voters.
Adding to Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada from these single-digit, electoral-vote states, he also reached 80 percent carriage of the 17-/18-29 voters in the following: Connecticut (83 percent) and Oklahoma (82 percent).
Although exit polls were not recorded, one may also add to Sanders's wins with Idaho, in which he won 78 percent of the overall vote; Maine, in which he won 64 percent of the overall vote; and both Alaska and Utah, in which he won 79 percent of their overall votes as likelihoods of this. In Hawaii, Sanders won 70 percent of the statewide vote. In Kansas, he received 68 percent of the statewide vote. In Nebraska, he received 57 percent of the statewide vote. He won about 55 percent of the vote from both Rhode Island and Wyoming. They may have been ones which resulted in him having reached carriage of 80 percent of their states's 17-/18-29 voters. And it is very likely that Colorado, which will likely join double-digit electoral-vote states in 2024 (via the U.S. Census Bureau's report in 2020), in which Sanders won 59 percent of the overall vote, also resulted in 17-/18-29 voters having carried for him with at least 80 percent of their vote.
Perhaps not surprising is that Bernie Sanders's best state, for 17-/18-29 voters, has been his home state, Vermont (95 percent). He won about 86 percent of the overall vote in Vermont.
Those states in which Bernie Sanders was in the 70s percentile range with carriage of 17-/18-29 voters were: North Carolina (72 percent), Missouri (78 percent), and Indiana (74 percent).
The states in which Bernie Sanders won in the 60s percentile range carriage of 17-/18-29 voters were: Florida (64 percent), New York (65 percent), Massachusetts (65 percent), Tennessee (61 percent), and Maryland (68 percent).
The states in which Bernie Sanders won in the 50s percentile range carriage of 17-/18-29 voters were: Texas (59 percent), Georgia (54 percent), and Arkansas (58 percent).
I don't have anything on Louisiana, due to no exit polls, in which Sanders received 23 percent of the overall vote.
There are two states, from the exit polls, in which Sanders did not carry 17-/18-29 voters: Alabama (40 percent) and Mississippi (37 percent). I'm guessing that Louisiana would be a third state. But I can't be sure. (He did win my home state, Michigan, with about 50 percent of the statewide vote and carried 17-/18-29 voters with 81 percent. So, it's a little tricky.)
I am guessing that about 40 percent of Sanders's popular vote has come from 17-/18-29 voters. (That is, after 30-44 and 45-64 and 65+ voters are factored. And no long-established Democratic frontrunner, certainly not Hillary Clinton, should be losing 17-/18-29 voters by such staggering a level.) I'd have to do some serious numbers crunching. But, according to Wikipedia.org, as of 05.10.2016 @ 07:45 a.m. ET, Sanders has received 9,446,660 million votes. If about 40 percent was from 17-/18-29 voters, that would mean over 3.7 million of those votes is about 22 million cast thus far (Hillary Clinton is at about 12.5 million) for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. (That's about 15 percent of the overall vote.) And, by the way, I could be underestimating with that 40-percent estimate.
This is clearly nothing to dismiss. As I mentioned before, in general elections, the 18-29 voters is the No. 1 voting-age base group giving support for Democrats (in elections both won and lost). And rather than turnout about 15 percent the size of the vote nationwide, as they have done in these 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, they are closer to 20 percent in general elections.
This is why a lot of the Hillary Clinton supporters, not just voters but insiders, are scared of Bernie Sanders. But, at the same time, if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination … how she and Democratic Party politics would handle themselves and their political party with this, going forward, will be very important.
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