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Conjecture
Ok my dude.
For years now have Bernie supporters in here been trying to say I either make up stuff about Sanders or are operating on false or incomplete info, so it is whatever to me.
You know you could look up 2016 for yourself, but here is a jumping off point, knock yourself my g....
https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/primaries/polls/al/Dem
I said conjecture because even after last night's response you didn’t demonstrate how Bernie’s support has stood static and/or diminished among non-white voters.
In that sense, most of that you said—“he has not really improved on those numbers,” him “probably” increasing his support since the end of the primary, and acknowledging Sanders as having more non-white support between September 2015 and now—was conjecture. There's nothing wrong with an informed guess, but let's call it what it is and not wrap a conjecture in a declarative assessment of the supposed sameness of Bernie's support.
It's only now that you've provided a link to exit polling data. Which in state after state, as you rightly note, it was Clinton who secured the black and non-white vote. But again. I was responding to the very specific claim that Sanders' support has not expanded. You initially did not show that. And, frankly, I can't tell how, after providing the December 2019 Marist and 2016 exit polls, you can't not say unequivocally and without conjecture, that Sanders' support among black and Latino voters hasn't expanded.
At the end of the day, my position is simple. First, although polling can be a quotidian barometer of opinion, polls ultimately say more about the technocratic vision and inclinations of its interpreters. Polls say more about what it is people think polls are supposed to convey than how actually existing people decide whom to support. And I think even Bernie supporters fall into the technocratic trap of trying to show that 'see, Bernie's polling high among black and brown folks.' (This vox piece made the rounds as soon as it dropped and since. https://www.vox.com/2019/3/7/18216899/bernie-sanders-bro-base-polling-2020-president).
My second point is that the best way to get a sense of how people are leaning is to talk to actually existing people whether on barber shops, on the bus, etc.
Third, that the people who went to Bernie's rally in Queens Bridge park in remarkable numbers back in October and the December rally in Los Angeles was not a mirage. Surely, a generational cohort showed up en mass. But I believe--and really that's the fundamental terrain on which we're arguing; beliefs--that the base has changed, grown larger and stronger. To go back and forth about polls, then, is to highlight a clash not so much in values (on which we mostly agree) but how it is we come to know what we know and how we use that information to make political claims about what is happening around us.
