What is your indicator that Bernie would have beaten Trump?... in other words... what makes you think he would have won?
Remember, your argument now, is that independents are all over the map, not concentrated Bernie voters.
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Never! These Bernie supporters are not about issues... just reactionaries.
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It’s literally better than the nothing you presented. It is an indicator and those that do treat it as empirical, are still more justified than ‘social media changes things’.
There are only 9 states out of 50 that have closed primaries, 7 more have partially closed primaries:
https://www.ncsl.org/research/electi...ary-types.aspx
Bernie won Nevada, a closed state.
Bernie won Utah, a partially closed state.
Bernie won Connecticut, a closed state.
Half of Bernie’s won states came from the very closed states or partially closed states, that require registration to a political party. Bernie won 3 of the 16 states with closed/partially closed elections and 3 of 34 that were open. As in, Bernie had a better, not worse, chance to win in closed elections.
https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/pr...s-and-caucuses
Edit: Something else that’s fun... Bernie won WA primaries in 2016, when they were closed, but lost to Biden when they were open in 2020.
Edit 2: Just to undercut the possible reaction to the above... If you claim that Trump supporters voted Biden in open elections, I have a shit ton of Trump quotes telling his supporters to do exactly that... but... for Bernie, not Biden. It doesn’t look like it worked in any direction...