Can you provide some proof of this?
- Second page has the crosstabs for the "who are you voting for in November?" question.
Y'all just don't get it.
Tons 👏 of Bernie voters 👏 in WV 👏 protest 👏 voted 👏 for him.
I'm not painting any other picture than what is fair, and I'm certainly not using "isolated examples: 40 percent of the Democratic primary electorate always planned on voting for Trump. Of the remaining sixty percent or so, 35 percent legitimately supported Sanders and 25 percent legitimately supported Clinton. The overall group of Trump supporters was the plurality among those three groups, and 25% of all WV Democratic primary voters were Trump supporters who voted Bernie despite never supporting him.
They didn't vote for him because they liked him or wanted to see him as President: they voted for him because he wasn't Hillary Clinton - just like a huge portion of the love for Clinton there in the 2008 primary was fueled by her not being Blacky McBlackface.
They are conservatives who are registered Democrats because the Democratic Party has and still does rule WV local politics with an iron fist: they have closed primaries and if you want any say whatsoever over who ultimately runs your local and state politics, you register as a Democrat. This stuff isn't hard: a majority of registered voters in WV are registered Democrats but WV hasn't given a majority of its votes to a [presidential GE] Democrat since 1996; in the past four elections, it [the margin] hasn't even been in the single-digits.
It's not an outlier, it's not an exception: the difference between the picture you and others are trying to paint versus what is the reality is the difference between a solidly-progressive state and a heavily-conservative one; the difference between a legitimate Sanders rout (in both primary and general) and a victory where the primary's margin was fueled solely by protest voting.
