What explains the white support for Hillary Clinton?

[Recursion]

Don't white people know that they are literally the only ethnic group to see zero wage gains in the past 40 years? Is it like Patty Hearst syndrome?

Kidding aside, a couple of things struck me as interesting from the exit polls:

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/01/politics/super-tuesday-exit-polls/index.html

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic voters largely said they would be happy with either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders as their nominee.

Democratic voters were also less likely than their Republican counterparts to say their candidates' attacks were unfair. Democratic voters largely decided that Sanders was not too liberal for them, nor was Clinton not liberal enough.

As well as:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/01/super-tuesday-democratic-results-latest-news.html

Early exit poll data showed that 52 percent of Democratic voters in Tennessee wanted more liberal policies from a new president, with that number coming in at 46 percent in Oklahoma and 43 percent in Vermont, NBC News reported. Overall, 51 percent of Democratic voters said they wanted the next president to continue Barack Obama's policies, while 31 percent said they wanted more liberal policies.

In Virginia, 74 percent of voters who identified as black said they would like the next president to continue Obama's policies, while 17 percent said they wanted more liberal policies, according to NBC News. Among white voters, 53 percent said they wanted a continuation of Obama's policies, while 35 percent said they wanted more liberal ones.

To the extent that Sanders is trying to make this about Clinton being "insufficiently liberal", I think that's a huge tactical mistake on his part (and in fairness that's more his supporters than him), because that's a very hard case to make, and it's clearly not working.

And interestingly, Clinton is doing better in states in which more Democrats want more liberal policies, and worse in states in which they want a continuation of current policies.

[Recursion]

1. A bit more exit poll tea leaf reading

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-super-tuesday-democratic-exit-poll-analysis/story?id=37308989

Ideology: Similar to the GOP side, Democratic primary voters are more ideologically homogenous than in the past. Between roughly half and seven in 10 in preliminary results are liberals, including about two in 10 to a third who say they’re “very” liberal. That’s up pretty much across the board from 2008 and similar to what we’ve seen in the first four contests this year.

Ideological fit: Southern state voters see a better ideological fit with Clinton than with Sanders. Six in 10 to seven in 10 say Clinton’s positions on the issues are about right. In contrast, about four in 10 to six in 10 think Sanders’ positions are about right, vs. a quarter to a third who say he’s too liberal. Sanders’ views generally fit much better with voters in Vermont and Massachusetts, as they did previously in New Hampshire.

Satisfaction: Between three-quarters and eight in 10 voters today across the Southern states say they’d be satisfied with Clinton as the eventual nominee, vs. only half to seven in 10 for Sanders. That’s the flipside of New Hampshire, where more voters said they’d be satisfied with Sanders as the nominee.

(You'd never believe it from DU, but a greater percentage of Democrats nationally say they would "never" support a Sanders ticket than a Clinton ticket.)

Roughly, it looks to me like the "Clinton isn't liberal enough" tack isn't working, and Sanders needs to go back to the "I'm an outsider who can actually change things" tack.

[jfern]

2. They must like her appeals to "hard working white people"

[iAZZZo]

3. op: "What explains the white support for Hillary Clinton?"

senator boxer wondered about diversity in sanders' rally crowds the other day

she never queried about diversity in clinton's fund-raising crowds, though.............

in s.c the other night when #whichhillary was initially promulgated, the attendance was less than diverse

[Downwinder]

4. I have absolutely no idea.

[gcomeau]

5. Much the same thing that explains general support for Clinton.

A reliance on name recognition and hype over sound analysis of policy and the history of the candidate.

Case in point, the very many people who actually think this graph is sane, let alone accurate:




There are vast numbers of Democrats who think in their gut that that graph is about right. Those are the people saying that they don't think Clinton isn't liberal enough... or that her positions on the issues are "about right".

Sure she and her positions are liberal enough! Look how liberal she is! She's just not super duper liberal like Bernie...


It's.... well, crazy.

[comradebillyboy]

6. As a white man who supports Hillary

my admiration for her goes back to the 90s. Her leadership in trying to get universal health care, her resilience to the non-stop right wing attack machine, her courage in standing up to the Ken Starr witch hunts, her never quit attitude and her amazing smarts converted me from a Hillary hater to one of her many admirers. Nothing that has passed in the intervening years has changed my opinion of her.

I can only speak for myself here, not white people in general.