SANDERS ‘DISAPPOINTED’ IN TURNOUT
Concedes failure to inspire young voters in assessing setback
BURLINGTON, Vt.
After losing most Super Tuesday states to Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered a striking assessment of his campaign, acknowledging that he was “disappointed” with the results and that his crucial campaign message of inspiring young people to vote was falling short.
“Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing young people in?” he told reporters during a hastily assembled news conference at his campaign office in Burlington, Vt. “The answer is no.”
The concession underscored a fundamental challenge for Sanders’ political revolution, one that has become increasingly clear: In state after state, there has been little evidence — at least outside California — that he has generated higher turnout among young voters. And although he has promised to deliver record turnout, it may in fact be Biden who is accomplishing that, lifted by his strong support among black voters.
In Texas, where Biden prevailed over Sanders, only 15 percent of voters were younger than 30, and nearly two-thirds were 45 or older, according to exit polls. The age breakdown was similar in California.
In no state did people younger than 30 account for more than 20 percent of the electorate, based on exit polls, and in most states they accounted for 15 percent or less.
Because so few young people voted, it did not matter that Sanders won them by huge margins, because Biden won the much more plentiful older voters.
In addition, while Sanders has succeeded in galvanizing Latino voters — he won them by about 27 percentage points over Biden in California — he has struggled to build support among black voters.
In Alabama, where black voters were half of the electorate, Sanders lost them by more than 60 points. He lost them by more than 50 points in Virginia, and by more than 40 points in Texas and North Carolina. In several states, he came in third among black voters, behind not only Biden but also Mike Bloomberg.
Unlike in the first nominating contests, when these failures did not stop Sanders from winning, his inability to expand the electorate was crucial to his losses on Super Tuesday, when Biden beat him in 10 of 14 states, including Texas, Virginia and North Carolina.
After Sanders’ dominant performance in Nevada less than two weeks ago, his aides and advisers had operated with new swagger, cautiously optimistic about his chances even in Southern states like South Carolina that they had expected to lose. He competed especially heavily in Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Minnesota, holding big rallies that doubled as shows of force.
But as the clock ticked toward midnight Tuesday and his losses began to pile up, the campaign’s buoyant tone shifted sharply. When Sanders took the stage at an election-night rally in Essex Junction, Vt., he was defiant, declaring that he would “win the Democratic nomination” despite a series of weakerthan-expected results. Aides and advisers insisted it was still early and urged reporters not to jump to conclusions.
“If you turn off your television at 10 p.m. tonight, you will wake up tomorrow to a different race,” Mike Casca, a spokesman for Sanders, said at one point.
But by Wednesday morning, that optimism was gone.
“Of course I’m disappointed,” Sanders said at the news conference in Burlington. “I would like to win every state by a landslide. It’s not going to happen.”
He blamed his underperformance in part on the “venom” of the “corporate media.”
As he has begun to do in recent days, he also framed the race as one between him and Biden, and drew explicit contrasts between his record and the former vice president’s.
“Joe and I have a very different voting record,” he said. “Joe and I have a very different vision for the future of this country. And Joe and I are running very different campaigns.”
“My hope is that in the coming months, we will be able to debate and discuss the very significant differences that we have,” he added.
Some supporters of Sanders — including prominent surrogates like Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — have argued that Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, by staying in the race while several moderates dropped out, was partly responsible for Sanders’ disappointing performance.
But while backers of Sanders believe many of Warren’s supporters would have migrated to him, exit polls suggested that the shift would have been too small to change the outcome in key states.