Where Elizabeth Warren’s New Votes Are Coming From
Elizabeth Warren is up in the polls lately. Where is her new support coming from? A look at the polls shows she is drawing from Biden's supporters and perhaps from undecided and lower-ranked candidates — but not Bernie Sanders's supporters.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks via Skype at the United Food and Commercial Workers’ 2020 presidential candidate forum on October 13, 2019 in Altoona, Iowa.Scott Olson / Getty
Media coverage of the 2016 primaries almost always ignored the influence that name recognition had on the Clinton and Sanders coalitions. This time around, Sanders has enjoyed the advantages of high name recognition — including outsize support from the diverse and relatively low-income Democratic base. As I noted back in August, the media has mostly met this shift with awkward silence.
That is likely to change in the near future. As Elizabeth Warren has gained steam, she has drawn in a larger share of the base — which means that she is gaining support among relatively poor voters and BIPOC. More than anything, this shift just means the normalization of a coalition that, before, was disproportionately wealthy and white; but that is not, of course, how the media will cover it. The Sanders campaign should probably expect the 2016 narrative of the white male “Bernie Bro” to make its belated return, with not a moment’s reflection in the media on how contingent these demographic coalitions actually are.
One argument for Sanders (among many) has highlighted the support he has drawn in polls from relatively poor and marginalized voters as evidence of a bottom-up movement of the powerless against the powerful. I have never been fond of this argument, simply because in the United States, the powerless are pretty disengaged from electoral politics — to say nothing of party primaries. And while the Sanders campaign has fought mightily to overcome this widespread pacification, I don’t think this is the sort of trend one reverses in an election or two.
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