2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump. Period. [View all]Bucky
(53,947 posts)You continue to ignore the empirical evidence that he always did better, far far better, against Trump than Clinton.
For most of the year, Clinton led Trump in polls by 2-4 points. There were two times Clinton had briefly strong leads against Trump. Her post convention bump and her surge in mid-October when the "grab 'em by the pussy" video came out. Each time, within a couple of weeks, Trump whittled her lead down to just 2-4 points in national polls--exactly where she was against him in the summer before her nomination.
The final result was Clinton beat Trump by about 1/2 a percentage point. So the polls, while not perfect, were pretty consistent and not wildly inaccurate. In fact, a 5 point polling gap is technically within the typical 3% margin of error--if Clinton drops her 3 points and Trump gains his 3 points. Those same polls in the summer showed Sanders beating Trump by 10-15 points. Trump's ability to close that gap is just not plausible.