Campaign Mystery: Why Don't Bernie Sanders' Big Rallies Lead To Big Wins?

[MADem]

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/26/475681237/campaign-mystery-why-dont-bernie-sanders-big-rallies-lead-to-big-wins?utm_

If you only considered crowd size at rallies for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, you might wonder how Clinton has won so many big states. Sanders draws massive, enthusiastic crowds, while Clinton's rallies often seem tiny and subdued by comparison.

Monday night, the eve of five East Coast primaries taking place today, Sanders spoke to an overflow crowd — 3,200 people in total — at Drexel University in Philadelphia. His audience was more than double the crowd that showed up to hear Hillary Clinton speak at Philadelphia's city hall.

On Sunday, 14,000 were there for Sanders in New Haven, Conn.

6,600 in Baltimore, Md., on Saturday.

And 27,000 people came to hear Sanders in Manhattan's Washington Square Park a week before New York's crucial primary.........If big crowds meant big wins at the polls, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and former Texas Rep. Ron Paul would both be president. But election after election, crowd size has been an unreliable predictor of winning.

"The people at the rally are not a random or representative sample of the electorate," says Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science and communication studies at University of California, Los Angeles. "These are strategic and well-planned events. This isn't just happening."

Rallies are designed to look like spontaneous displays of excitement for a candidate, but they are planned right down to picking a venue that will overflow rather than look half-empty........

[brooklynite]

1. Same reason for Howard Dean...

[brush]

6. Most of Sanders' rallies were held on or near college campuses . . .

to attract the under-thirty crowd. They're fun events. Many go to experience it, to see and be seen.

Unfortunately, many can't be bothered to vote or even get registered to vote.

Did the campaign even have people registering voters at the rallies?

[brooklynite]

7. As I recall, there was a complaint here last year about why DNC wasn't doing that...

When I was a college kid, voter registration didn't involve a call to Washington; it involved a folding table, a chair, a pen, and some voter forms.

[brush]

9. Should have been seen to by the Sanders campaign

I mean, why have these huge rallies and not get as many registered as possible?

Such a no-brainer but apparently not thought of?

WTH. Who dropped that ball?

[Nye Bevan]

2. Rallies like that are fun, exciting social occasions for people with no commitments.

I would have enjoyed those rallies in my student days, having plenty of free time to go to them and not having to get up early the next day. Of course, those who have to earn livings and raise families don't have as much time on their hands to go to those events, but we still make the effort to vote.

[Human101948]

4. My millenial daughter went to a political rally and had to get up early for work the next day...

How does that fit with your characterization? No? How could that be?

[Armstead]

5. Nicely dismissive...yeah those young punks ajnd unemployed bums have no brains

Just a bunch of half baked pot smoking numskulls.

Unlike the Great Silent Majority....er, wait a minute. Starting to sound like Nixon there....

[R B Garr]

13. Exactly. And it looks like a lot of them go just to post something to their social media

pages. It's the Selfie Revolution first and foremost.

[LiberalFighter]

15. That is the mindset of of many (not all) of that group.

They have to let others know what is happening with them at that moment. They have to let others know that they are doing something exciting.

[Armstead]

20. Yeah it's so easy to go out and stand in cold shitty weather for several hours

[Vinca]

3. Young people don't seem to bother to vote and that's the majority of Bernie voters.

They'll probably regret it someday. I know I could have voted against Ronald Reagan, but I couldn't be bothered to take the time to register to vote.

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. People have little sense of population phenomena

27,000 in Washington Square Park? Almost 10 times that number voted in Manhattan alone (around 267,000).

3,000 in Drexel? 80 times that number will vote in Philadelphia alone.

It's hard for people to wrap their head around large numbers of people expressing preference. The tendency to view one's peer group as representative is also a major stumbling block to coherent and clear political thought. Nothing deceives the really fanatical Sanders voters so much as their seemingly absolute faith in their own rightness. They simply can't imagine that anyone could support their opponent, so they invent wild fantasies about how the clear victories of their opponent are illegitimate. It's no different than Tea Party dynamics. The greatest deficit of being a fanatic is the utter inability to imagine that anyone thinks or perceives the world differently than you do.

It's totalitarian in essence.

[JaneyVee]

16. I live near Washington Square Park...

There is always 27,000 people in there. Its in the heart of Greenwich Village, directly across the street from NYU.

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. I grew up in NY

Been there many times. In the old days, we used to have a "pot parade" in Washington Square Park - far more than 27,000. I think it was Giuliani who put a stop to that.

[floppyboo]

10. Remember too that many of those attending who MIGHT support Sanders

and are registered 'no-party' or yes, even 'republican' are not reflected in the results, yet clearly are represented in the national head-to-head polls.

So while these large numbers of rally attendees may not impact the primaries, you can bet your sweet illusions that you'll see them in the GE.

[MADem]

23. Or not registered, or not citizens.

One of our tribe went to one of those things here in Boston with a large group of friends. At least half of them were foreign students. They had a great time, took pictures, posted them on the facebook, went out for food after, did what college kids do.

But I don't think any of them were registered to vote.

[floppyboo]

29. Yup. Lots of universal enthusiasm for the people's revolution! nt

[Adrahil]

11. Not much of a mystery, really....

Bernie has a core of very loyal, enthusiastic supporters, and Bernie has become the core of a cult of personality. But I want to be clear. I do NOT mean that his supporters don't care about the issues. They certainly do. But I believe many of his supporters have basically channeled all their hopes and dreams into Bernie personally. It's not really hard to see why. For all the talk of REVOLUTION, it's pretty much the Bernie show. He has publicly supported, what, THREE down-ballot candidates? Hardly a revolution. So all the focus is on Bernie. He is the personification of their "movement." And that core group is very enthusiastic about it. So, he turns out YOOGE rally crowds, but his support is not as broad. Look at the results. He's getting CRUSHED among POC, and usually loses by a broad margin among actual Democrats. And in the end, the actual electorate is many, MANY times the size of his crowds. So there a lot of people like me who support Clinton, even enthusiastically, who aren't going to run out to every rally. But we vote. Ansd at the end of teh day, votes and delegates matter, not rally crowd sizes.

[Armstead]

22. What you fail to see or acknowledge is....

that Bernie did not spring out of a vacuum. He resonates and reflects something much bigger.

The reason he has "caught on" with so many people is that he is bring out issues, and core problems -- and possible solutions -- that the vast majority of politicians and the media almost NEVER acknowledge. Instead they feed us corproater propaganda and the product of elite cocktail party chit chat of the elites disguised as the "conventional wisdom."

Millenials look around and see the shitty world they have been thrust into....and being idealistic many want to actually participate, instead of buying the Corporate Kool Aid.

But it also resonates among many older people who have become frustrated and jaded by decades of steadily escalating systemic corruption and do-nothing government and empty partisan games and gridlock....

And that feeling is not just among "leftist ideologies." People who are moderate also feel frustrated and angry aqt the same conditions. (On the right that has led to Trump's success.)

Yeah people should participate at all levels, and it has to be deeper...But the reception and attitudes by the Democratic Establishment, Clinton herself and her supporters is not goign to inspire that sense of commitment....It will cause people to either revert to cynical apathy ("why bother they're all the same...&quot or to look for other ways to channel their desire to contribute to solutions.

Ignore that, and the Democratic party will continue to slide into irrelevance, regardless of which "team" gets the trophy this year.

[bkkyosemite]

27. Ding Ding Ding...Wrong!

[forjusticethunders]

12. I've never been to a Sanders rally

But if the lack of initiative in registering people is true, then that's an issue with the campaign. I would have 20-30 volunteers covering the entrances and exits asking "Where are you from? Have you registered to vote yet? If not, here's some information on how to register in your state! Here's some extra pamphlets for your friends and family!"

Also it's important to note that even if everyone at a given rally votes for their candidate, it's a drop in the bucket in a primary (as opposed to a caucus).

[Octafish]

14. Good question. So, who counts the votes?

Seeing how if someone bothers to go to a rally, they likely will remember to go to the polls when it counts.

Seems to be a problem somewhere, and when votes are tabulated electronically, it isn't apathy.

[LonePirate]

18. There is a greater chance of rally attendees not voting than there is of vote counting problems.

[Octafish]

19. Not sure about that. I do know very wealthy people own the e-vote industry.

Some critics of electronic voting raised questions about the 2002 Georgia race even at the time. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was five percentage points ahead of Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss in polls taken a week before the vote, lost 53% to 46%. Incumbent Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who led challenger Sonny Perdue in the polls by eleven points, lost 51% to 46%. However, because the Diebold machines used throughout the state provided no paper trail, it was impossible to ask for a recount in either case.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/19/553899/-

[MADem]

25. Everyone at the rally has the idea that "Well, there were so many people there,

the rest of them will vote."

They all expect the other guy to carry the weight.

You cannot vote if you are not registered--that's the issue. Not complicated conspiracies.

[Triana]

17. They don't vote. n/t

[MADem]

28. Yes. They have to register and many haven't done that.

I'm guessing if Sanders had this to do over again, he'd have voter registration efforts at his speeches and appearances and would have focused more on registering people to vote ahead of all these "Brigading" GOTV efforts. It would be item ONE on that oft-recited stump speech.

I have a relative who is a college kid, who went to one of those rallies with over a half dozen friends, and of the ones who are US citizens and eligible to vote, I don't think any of them are registered voters.

These guys who are busily GOTVing with their Brigading phone call/text efforts could well be calling unregistered citizens who are giving them lip service that they're on their way or just came back from voting (one vote won't make a difference, after all...get enough people believing that, and there ya go).

[whatchamacallit]

24. Fraud?

[restorefreedom]

26. its not a mystery: disenfranchchisement coupled with fraud. nt