Bernie Sanders Just Trounced Hillary Clinton in Three of the Ten Most Diverse States in America

I may do a happy dance.

"The overwhelming majority of the voting data accumulated thus far in the Democratic primaries contradicts the media narrative suggesting Bernie Sanders doesn’t perform well in states with diverse populations.

While the fact that Sanders yesterday swept “Western Saturday” (with votes in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington) is a part of the analysis — as is the fact that, in just a few hours of voting, Sanders managed to eliminate 22.5% of Hillary Clinton’s 296-delegate lead — it isn’t the greater part. I’m not even focusing here on the fact that, after weeks of being told how staggeringly far ahead Clinton is in the pledged delegate race, her monumental margin ends up, as of today, being no more than 54.9% to 45.1%.

A single-digit lead.

With 1,750 pledged delegates — nearly 45% of all pledged delegates — yet to be awarded, across 22 future nominating contests.

So: those are some pretty eye-popping numbers.

Still, far more important to undercutting the specious media narrative about Bernie Sanders and diverse electorates is a somewhat broader observation: that thus far, six of the ten most diverse states in America have held Democratic nominating contests, and both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have won three of these contests.

In two of her three wins in ultra-diverse states, Clinton won with relatively slim majorities: in Arizona she pulled 57.6% of the vote, and in Nevada, 52.6%.

In both states, Clinton substantially underperformed pre-election polling. The RCP polling average in Arizona predicted a 30-point victory; instead, Clinton won by 17.7%, and in fact she lost the live (Election Day) voting to Sanders, 52% to 48%. Meanwhile, in Nevada, Clinton met the expectations set by polls taken in the 120 hours before the caucuses, but fell dramatically short of the last poll taken prior to that period, which predicted a 23-point Clinton victory instead of the 5.5-point one she got. This enabled Sanders to claim, not unfairly, that he’d made up more than 17 points on Clinton in the eight weeks leading up to the Silver State caucuses. The New York Times, getting it right for once, called Clinton’s Nevada win “narrow”.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders won his three contests in ultra-diverse states — Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington — with 81.6%, 69.8%, and 72.7% shares of the vote, respectively."