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Bernie Sanders’ victory in the New Hampshire primary gives the Vermont senator a boost in his push to win the Democratic nomination for president. Now, some voters are wondering not only whether he’ll make it to the ballot — but what the general election will look like if he does.
On the same day Sanders won 26% of the state’s Democratic primary vote, some rural New Hampshire residents said that even though they supported Sanders’ policies, they were cautious about his electability in a contest with President Donald Trump.
Richard Floreani, of New Boston, told VTDigger he supported the platforms of progressive candidates like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But he didn’t vote for either candidate.
“The hell with what everybody else does, I want to vote for what I feel in my heart,” he said of his thoughts leading up to the primary. But, “the impeachment changed that. It’s just too dangerous. It’s more important that Donald Trump get out.”
Floreani voted for Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor who won 24% of the votes.
Sanders’ supporters are confident he’ll perform in a general election contest against Trump. Cathy Morrissey, who volunteered for the campaign, said she thinks a Sanders ticket would boost voter turnout in November.
“Bernie’s going to bring out the disenchanted people,” she said. “He’s going to bring out the youth who don’t normally vote, he’s going to bring out the people who fall through the cracks. They got him, trust him.”
But in order to make it to the general election, Sanders will have to win over similar skeptics in Nevada, South Carolina and the upcoming Super Tuesday states. On this week’s podcast, VTDigger’s Xander Landen talks to voters about why the question of Sanders’ electability is still unanswered.
**Podcast transcript**
This week: Bernie Sanders’ victory in the New Hampshire primary gives the Vermont senator a boost in his post to win the Democratic nomination for president. Now, some voters are wondering not only whether he’ll make it to the ballot, but what the general election will look like if he does.
It’s Tuesday night. I’m in an arena in Manchester waiting for the results to come in. About 1,000 Sanders supporters and staffers are milling around, watching the returns on a jumbotron streaming CNN. This takes a few hours, so to keep the crowd energized, Sanders staffers come around every few minutes to lead a series of cheers.
Crowd: We are the 99%! We are the 99%!
There’s one chant that’s been common at Sanders rallies since around last summer, one that might be taking on new significance.
Crowd: Bernie beats Trump! Bernie beats Trump!
I’m standing next to one supporter wearing this Bernie T-shirt by a Montpelier-based designer. I figured she might be a Vermonter.
Dana Lisaius: I’m Dana.
What’s your last name?
Lisaius: Lisaius. It’s Lithuanian, I can’t believe you didn’t know.
I only know the shirt, my level of knowledge stops there.
Dana and her husband are longtime Bernie supporters.
How long have you been on Bernie’s side?
Lisaius: Oh my god, since we moved to Vermont. We moved in ’85, ’84.
So I asked her about the chant.
I’m curious what people here think about what an actual Bernie versus Trump general election looks like.
Lisaius: He’ll beat him. He’ll win. He’ll win because there’s only, what, 30% of the voters who would vote for Trump. I mean, if we get everyone out to vote, we’ll be fine.
Dana said she thinks Sanders has the best policies. But she also thinks Sanders could win over some voters who supported Donald Trump in 2016.
Lisaius: They voted for Trump for change. They didn’t vote for Hillary because they knew what they were going to get — another, you know, somebody who was politically paid for. Trump wasn’t paid for. We didn’t know how insane he was.
Do you think that some of the people who voted for Trump in 2016 would come around to Bernie?
Lisaius: I believe so, because in Warren, Vermont they are.
How have you seen that happen in Warren?
Lisaius: Well, we live in Warren, and there’s many people who voted for Trump who are now embarrassed that they voted for him. And now they’ve changed their mind to vote for somebody who can positively make changes and who so many people believe in.
So inside the Sanders party, it’s Bernie beats Trump. But outside, in other parts of New Hampshire, some voters aren’t so sure.
Xander Landen: We started out our day in a rural town, about 3,000 people that voted for, you know, Trump by about 54%, 57% in 2016.
I spent primary day with our politics reporter Xander Landen.
Landen: We’re standing out in front of the community center. Cars are pulling in. We’re going up to voters when they walk out of the polling place, asking them to talk — some say yes, some say no. Some want to speak, some don’t.
Landen: Would you guys have two minutes? We’re reporters talking about the primary today.
Voter: You know what, sweetheart? I just don’t, I’m going to my sister’s and I can hardly wait.
Landen: Understood, have fun.
Landen: You know, sometimes voters didn’t want to say who they voted for. It was sort of rare when you got the voter that wanted to talk to the reporters, but didn’t want to talk about who they supported, but there were some who felt they wanted to keep that private.
Do you mind if I ask who you voted for?
Judy Gill: No I don’t mind, but I’m not gonna tell you. [Laughs] Because there’s so many people still, I couldn’t hardly make a decision.
Landen: What we wanted to do was go to parts of New Hampshire that voted for Trump in 2016. And get a sense of how the Democratic voters in those more rural, purple, leaning-conservative parts of the state felt about Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
First of all, how many Bernie supporters are in these parts of the state, and also how they think Bernie would do against President Donald Trump in the general election. We knew that Sanders was well-favored in a lot of the more urban, so to speak, hubs of the state like Keene, New Hampshire, which is a big college town, like Manchester, which is the biggest city in the state. But how are these voters in in more far-flung places that are more red in general feel about him and his electability?
And this is because, given that Sanders has won victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, albeit narrow victories, he definitely has a good shot at becoming the nominee. It is becoming more and more realistic that he could actually face Trump in a general election.
Landen: It’s definitely a realistic possibility that he’s going to be the nominee. I think it’s definitely not safe to say that it’s likely yet, but he’s performed extremely well so far. Polling indicates that in places like California, and even in South Carolina where he wasn’t doing so well, about a month or two ago — he’s climbing in those polls. He has a shot. And I think voters are really thinking about when they’re thinking about Sanders, his chances against the president, because ultimately for Democrats, this is an election about largely, who can unseat President Donald Trump.
Landen: If Bernie was up against Trump, you don’t think that he would have a good shot.
Lori Kyer: I don’t think so.
Landen: And why is that exactly?
Kyer: Because he’s so far to the left that the people in this country, I don’t think he could convince as many people to vote for him because he’s so extreme. They already know what to expect from Trump. You know what I mean? And I don’t think they’ll pull enough voters from the even moderate Republican side.
Landen: We heard from a lot of people, Democrats, at the polls yesterday, concerned about that, and Sanders’ ability to face off against the president.
But you would be okay if Bernie made it to the top?
Gill: Oh sure, I’d be fine.
How do you feel like he would do against Trump?
Gill: That’s gonna be rough. I don’t know whether he’s got the stamina to do it or not, and the grit to do it, but I really, I just don’t know. I really don’t know. But I’d be rooting for him, if, you know, he made it that far. All the way.
Landen: A lot of these voters said that they like Bernie Sanders, they like his progressive ideas, they like Medicare for All. They like the idea of free college tuition at public colleges and universities. They like the long-standing commitment he’s had on these issues for the decades that he’s been in politics. But what worries them, as one voter put it, is that he’s too radical for the rest of the country.
I spoke with a lot of people at the polls yesterday who said, ‘I would like to support Bernie, but I think that right now the country needs a more moderate candidate. And so I’m going to have to vote for Pete Buttigieg.’
Richard Floreani: I racked my brains up and down. I was undecided until just before I walked in.
Who did you decide on?
Floreani: Pete.
Landen: There was this one guy, his name was Richard Floreani. And he initially caught my attention because of the way he’s dressed. He was wearing a beige Fedora and jacket, a very kind of fancy old-timey jacket. Turns out he was 80 years old. He looked maybe 10 years younger than that. He’s a veteran of the Navy. He used to be an airline pilot. And he said that when he showed up at the polls, he was caught between three candidates. He wasn’t sure if he was gonna vote for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Pete Buttigieg.
Floriani: Bernie, Elizabeth, Pete. Bernie, Elizabeth, Pete. Right brain, left brain, right brain, left brain…
Landen: And when it came down to it, when he was at the polling place, he decided that he would support Buttigieg. He said that, you know, if he was voting with his heart, he would have voted for Sanders or Warren, the progressive candidates, but because he thinks that defeating Trump is the most important thing in this election, he wanted to go someone who he believes is more electable. So he chose Pete Buttigieg.
Floreani: I wanted to go with my heart, and vote for who I wanted to, whose politics I follow the closest, to hell with what everybody else does. I wanted to vote for what I feel in my heart. Impeachment changed that. I say shit’s too dangerous. It’s more important that Donald Trump get out, period. That’s the most important thing. It’s more important than my politics.
Landen: I think that that is representative of a lot of the voters. A lot of the Democrats in the state, and it was kind of borne out in the results last night, where we saw kind of unexpected support, maybe not for Pete Buttigieg, but certainly for Amy Klobuchar, getting about 20% of the vote when she, you know, a couple of weeks ago, no one would have imagined that she’d do so well in New Hampshire. I think in June of 2019, there was a poll in New Hampshire that put her at 1%. And now she’s at 20. So there’s definitely a large contingent of voters who are, at this point, siding with moderate candidates.
I talked to one woman when we were in Dunbarton, New Hampshire, who was an Amy Klobuchar supporter. This was Susan Jamback. She was organizing for her town’s Democratic committee. And unlike Richard Floreani, she didn’t really say that she agreed with Sanders’ policies. She just said, I think we need a more moderate person.
Jamback: I don’t believe he’s accomplished as much as somebody like Senator Klobuchar has, bringing the bills forward, getting them done, you know, and so yeah… He wanted Vermont to leave the country at one time.
A lot of people in Vermont still do.
Jamback: [Laughs] Well, you know, which one is upside down, New Hampshire or Vermont, right?
She did say that she would support Sanders if he ended up on the ticket. She said whoever is going to get there is going to get the support of her and her local Democratic allies. And Amy was her choice.
Landen: And that’s something that you heard from almost every voter at the polls, Democratic voter. They said that if it came down to it, if Bernie was nominee, they would vote for Bernie. I don’t think there was anyone I spoke with — and, you know, we were asking questions really focused about Bernie Sanders, because he’s our senator — no one was hating on Bernie Sanders.
I think that there is a concern from more moderate Democratic voters that if Bernie Sanders was the nominee, ultimately, that moderate voters would not turn out to cast ballots for him. Granted, we were talking to a very small sample size of about, you know, maybe 30 people, but from those people, at least, you didn’t get the sense that people would not turn out for Bernie if it came down to a general election. And you know, there are people on the left, to give the Sanders supporter perspective, people backing Bernie Sanders believe that he’s going to be able to inspire mass turnout on the left and get people out to vote who would not normally vote.
Cathy Morrissey: And Bernie’s gonna bring out the disenchanted people, right? He’s gonna bring out the youth who don’t normally vote. He’s gonna bring out the people who fall through the cracks who don’t normally vote. They got them, people trust them. So, yeah, absolutely, he has more than a shot to beat Trump. A lot of Republicans who voted for Trump, or even Independents, it was a hail mary. It was like, we need change. We need any kind of change. And now they don’t like the change that Trump got ’em, and they’re ready for Bernie.
They’re saying that, yeah, maybe you might lose some moderates. But he’s gonna bring all these other people to the polls who maybe haven’t even voted in past elections.
Landen: And there’s no doubt that at this point in the election, he has the youth vote locked up. I mean, I think it was something like 50% of 18 to 29-year-olds voted for Sanders in New Hampshire yesterday. It’s really those older voters that, you know, he hasn’t been able to win over. And it’s unclear to what extent he’s been able to expand his base from what it was in 2016. And for many political observers, that is Sanders biggest threat, you know, the fact that he’s not been able, it seems, to expand his base of supporters from what it was a few years ago.
You mentioned that, really, of all the folks we spoke to yesterday, even though it was a small sample size, very few of them really had any negative things to say about Sanders. What I found interesting was that that carried over even for Trump supporters that we talked to.
Landen: Yeah, we spoke to a few Republican voters, and none of them, you know, like you just said, none of them really had serious criticism for Bernie. I think they criticized him really squarely on his policies being too quote unquote socialist, too far to the left, just too focused on expanding the welfare system and the role of government way beyond what they’re comfortable with.
Patrick Shultz: I think he’s way too far too far to the left. I’m not too familiar with a lot of Sanders’ specific policies, but I just don’t like all the free government stuff. Personally, I think if you take away people’s desire to work for themselves, and, I don’t mean specifically work, but to fend for themselves in certain ways, then you create a nation full of lazy people.
Landen: But you you could definitely get the sense that they had a respect for Sanders — everyone that we spoke with, which, you know, wasn’t a lot of Republican voters, because it was, you know, the turnout was really generating a lot of Democratic support, here weren’t as many Republicans out and about. But the ones we spoke with noted, I think — there’s one voter named Gwen in Dunbarton, who voted for Trump, but really admired Sanders for his consistency.
Gwen Rice: He has been consistent from the beginning. And however he believes, he believes it with his whole heart and soul to the people that follow him. So I’m not a liberal, but I admire what he’s done, and who he’s brought together. I truly admire what he has done.
So did you vote for Trump today?
Rice: I did vote for Trump today.
Landen: So the way she sees it, he supports issues with his, you know, entire heart, and his supporters support him, and she admires the movement he’s created, even though it isn’t a movement that she wants to be a part of.
This is interesting, because if you were talking to conservative or Republican voters in 2016 — I actually lived in New Hampshire and was a reporter in New Hampshire in 2016. So I was doing this, I was at the polls when it was Trump versus Hillary. And there was a lot more criticism of Hillary Clinton from Republicans than there has been for Bernie Sanders. And you have to take things, you know, like sexism into account. You know, Hillary’s a woman, Bernie’s an old white guy — that probably played into this criticism to some extent. But Bernie is also not an establishment Democrat, you know, he speaks out against the establishment.
I think it was interesting, though, that nonetheless, that voter Gwen that we talked to — you asked her if she thought Sanders might win over some conservative voters, and she said flat out, no.
You seem to admire some of Sanders’ views.
Rice: I do.
Do you think that there might be Republican voters or conservative voters that voted for Trump, that might see something in Bernie and change their minds?
Rice: No, not at all.
Because he’s too far left?
Rice: He’s too far left. He would just not be able to sway that conservative vote over to his way of thinking.
Landen: Every Republican voter we spoke with said no. They said, just from a policy perspective, he’s too far to the left. I mean, there’s just no way that the majority of people that voted Trump in 2016 would even consider voting for Bernie Sanders.
Landen: If he got the nomination, and was going up against Trump, how do you think he would do? Do you think he would have a shot?
Dave Nault: I think he’s too socialist.
Landen: What particularly about his platform do you think conservatives or Republicans would be concerned about?
Nault: I think he just wants to expand and pay for way too many things. You know, using government money to pay for private things too much. I think if he was more moderate, he might have a better chance.
I think on the question of whether he can get any additional support from conservative voters, there’s only skepticism from the right on that. We talked to one other voter in the town of Dunbarton, a guy named Bruce.
You been a longtime Bernie supporter, first time supporter? Where are you at?
Bruce: I’ve pretty much supported him since 2016.
Who had an interesting point about how much of an advantage Trump has as an incumbent already.
Bruce: I think right now, anyone is going to have a tough time against Trump, simply because a lot of people vote with their wallet. If the economy’s good, sometimes it’s an uphill battle for somebody coming in to change who’s in office. So I don’t think it matters. Well, I think it’s going to be tough for anybody right now. They’re going to have to… it depends on who they’re talking to. If you’re not doing well now, then you’ll want to change.
Landen: He made the point that a lot of pundits are making that the economy in the U.S. is doing very well right now. There’s been very low unemployment and the stock market is doing pretty well and some sections of the workforce have seen wage increases, and it’s always harder for an incumbent president to be unseated when things are going well in the economy, and as Bruce, that voter said, people vote with their pocketbooks in many cases. And so that is always going to make it a harder battle for someone on the other side.
So it sounds like, to this question of what would a Sanders versus Trump general election actually look like? From talking to folks in New Hampshire on Tuesday, the answer is, we don’t really know yet.
Landen: Yeah. I mean, I think that from their perspective, many of them, the people voting for Buttigieg, and one person that even voted for Warren because she thought Warren was more electable. I think there is a lot of skepticism about Sanders and his ability to do it. But at the same time, those people who are saying that they don’t want to support Sanders now, will support him if he’s the nominee, so they say, in November if he ultimately gets it. They say they’re going to support him. So it’s sort of a chicken or the egg, because you could argue that if everyone who said they wish they could support Sanders because he was more electable actually voted for him, maybe he could be electable, right?
Because they liked his policies. Like, they said they wished they could vote for him because of his policies. And if they actually had, I mean, it would prove electibilty.
Landen: When these voters were talking about this, they were saying, it’s not about how I feel, it’s about how other people feel.
Floreani: Because it’s not so much what I think, it’s what other people are gonna think. I had to take that into the equation. Independents, I think there’s no doubt about it, Buttigieg would be more likely to swing them than anybody.
You’ve got people at this Bernie rally chanting “Bernie beats Trump, Bernie beats Trump.” If the voters we talked to were any indication, what did we learn yesterday about the circumstances around whether or not that actually could happen?
Landen: I think we learned that there’s a sizable portion of voters in New Hampshire and probably across the country who support Sanders and his very progressive views. And those people make him an extremely formidable candidate in the race. I think what was a little more unexpected was the support that the moderate candidates, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar, were able to secure.
I think it shows to some extent that there are a lot of people that are questioning Sanders’ ability to beat the incumbent president in November. And electability is really on the minds of voters this year. And Sanders’ biggest challenge in the coming weeks before some of these major contests like South Carolina and Nevada and the Super Tuesday states’ vote is convincing more people that he is equipped and poised to beat the president. How he does that? Don’t ask me, because I don’t run campaigns. But that’s his biggest challenge.
Thanks Xander, for the rundown.
Landen: Thank you, Mike.