Yes, Sanders Supporters Will Vote For Hillary Clinton in November

WASHINGTON, DC -- A month ago, a YouGov poll showed just 54 percent of Bernie Sanders’ supporters saying they would vote for Hillary Clinton in November. Last week, that number was up to 75 percent in a Quinnipiac poll.

Should those numbers alarm Clinton? They don’t appear to.

She noted a few months ago that a lot of her supporters in 2008 said they would never vote for Barack Obama – and they came around. In April 2008, 56 percent of Clinton supporters said they wouldn’t support Obama. By the time Clinton formally ended her campaign and endorsed Obama on June 7, asking her supporters to “take our energy, our passion and our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama,” 60 percent of her supporters were saying they would support Obama. And by August, it was up to 70 to 76 percent.

That’s where Clinton stands now with Sanders voters. It’s not so bad. And the share of Sanders’ supporters who say #ImWithHer is likely to keep rising as we march toward November.

“This is a volatile and kinetic time,” said Tim Malloy, a pollster at Quinnipiac University. “Things can start shifting dramatically now.”

Throughout the general election, as the party infighting of the primary fades and the stark choice comes into focus, people tend to line up behind their party. We’ve seen it happening with Donald Trump over the last weeks and months, as Republicans who had previously ridiculed and lambasted him lined up to support him.

“It’s reasonable to assume that if and when Bernie Sanders steps aside, he will give a vigorous pep talk to the people who follow him that in the interest of the party, they should vote for Hillary Clinton,” Malloy said, noting, “We’ve got no research that has ever said that a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters might go to Donald Trump.”

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