Bernie’s national polling has picked up after Iowa and New Hampshire, and he leads the new Washington Post/ABC News poll by double digits. But what’s most notable about the poll isn’t the headline number, but Bernie’s standing more broadly in the party.

He is now considered the most electable candidate, with 30 percent of Democrats believing he’s the candidate best suited to beating Trump and 72 percent saying he’d win against Trump. His support is relatively broad: 30 percent of white voters support him and 28 percent of black voters; he does very well among liberal voters (39 percent), but also has support among moderate/conservative voters (28 percent); likewise, his support skews toward white non-college voters, at 35 percent, but he still gets 22 percent among white college graduates. Only 17 percent of Democrats think Bernie’s positions are “too liberal,” and 62 percent say his ideology is “about right.”


The survey strongly suggests that if Bernie gets a delegate lead, it will be hard to run a Stop Bernie movement based on the idea he’s some radical, dangerous outlier. Democrats consider him firmly within the mainstream of their party.