Around 12 percent of Bernie Sanders’ supporters 13.2 million in the 2016 Democratic Party primary against Hillary Clinton ended up supporting former President Donald Trump in the general election, or almost 1.6 million, according to the Guide to the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey released by Harvard University in Aug. 2017.
That included 9 percent of Sanders’ 570,000 Wisconsin supporters, or 51,300, 8 percent of his 590,000 Michigan supporters, or 47,200, and 16 percent of his 732,000 Pennsylvania supporters, or 117,120.
That’s important because in 2016, Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College in those three states: in Wisconsin by 22,748 votes, in Michigan by 10,704 votes and in Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes.
Arguably, the brutal 2016 primary between Clinton and Sanders, coupled with Trump’s appeal on economic trade protectionism issues including tariffs on China to union households that supported Sanders but also Trump’s non-interventionist stance in Ukraine, led to the defections and helped propel Trump into the White House by fairly slim margins.
The study once again comes into view in 2024 with an even larger defection: Robert Kennedy, Jr. who has suspended his presidential campaign in battleground states and endorsed Trump, saying in his speech, “The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment. Our party was the bulwark against big money, interests and corporate power. True to its name, it was the party of democracy. As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag and big money… [and] abandoned democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president…”
Kennedy added, “Great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place primarily, and these are the principle causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic party and run as an independent and now to throw my support to President Trump. The clauses were free speech, a war in Ukraine and the war on our children. I’ve already described some of my personal experiences and struggles with a government censorship industrial complex.”
So, what impact might this have in the general election? Before dropping out of the race, Kennedy was polling at about 5 percent nationally. In 2020, 158.4 million people voted, and so 5 percent of that would be about 7.9 million, not as many as supported Sanders in the 2016 primary, but then again, Sanders never endorsed Trump.
In the five-way race, in Wisconsin, Kennedy was averaging 5 percent, in Michigan, he was averaging 5.8 percent and in Pennsylvania, Kennedy was average 4.4 percent.
Those voters are now up for grabs. And, if he had remained in the race, they could have been enough to tilt the race one way or another if Kennedy were disproportionately pulling from one candidate. When Trump was pitted against Biden, Kennedy appeared to pull disproportionately from Biden, but when pitted against Harris, Kennedy appeared to pull more from Trump as Harris re-consolidated Democratic support in the race.
Kennedy explained his rationale for pulling out included that aspect of being a spoiler, stating, “many months ago I promised the American people that I would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler, a spoiler, someone will alter the outcome of the election but has no chance of winning in my heart. I no longer believe that I have a realistic past of electoral victory in the face of this relentless systematic censorship and media control. So I cannot in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers to keep working their long hours or ask my donors to keep giving when I cannot honestly tell them that I have a real path to the White House.”
Now, with Kennedy’s endorsement, Trump could see another wave of defections coming his way. How big is the question. Presuming an outsized performance to Sanders’ supporters backing Trump in 2016 seems appropriate, but endorsements can only go so far, a lot of it might depend on how Trump tends to appeal to the Kennedy voters — who are they principally and what issues were they focused on? — which he appears to need to once again come out on top in the Electoral College. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
