If a bona fide member of the party establishment wins the presidential nomination, how is that going to exacerbate the Democratic Party’s divisions?

We can’t answer that question yet — Biden hasn’t won the nomination, although he continues to do what he needs to, especially by winning Michigan on Tuesday, a state critical to Democrats’ path to unseating President Trump in November.

AD

We can look at the constituencies Biden has struggled with to understand the tensions he will face if he’s the nominee. The rifts are real: In exit polls from states that voted Tuesday, Sanders’s supporters were more likely than Biden voters not to commit to voting for the Democratic nominee regardless of who it is.

AD

These are the Sanders supporters Biden will need to reach for party unity.

Young voters: This is by far Sanders’s most dominant and consistent constituency. In every state that has voted so far and The Washington Post has data on, Sanders has won voters under 30, often by a large margin. He does well with voters under 45, too.

But in nearly every state, young voters are the smallest of all the age groups to actually vote. That’s been Sanders’s Achilles’ heel. Could it mean Biden can focus less on trying to woo these voters on the safe assumption they might not be a big factor in the November election? Also, is talking to young voters even Biden’s strength? He started his campaign in Iowa with a “No Malarkey” bus tour, after all.

AD

Sanders is skeptical.

"To the Democratic establishment, I say to you,” Sanders said Wednesday in Vermont, “In order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country, and you must speak to the issues of concern to them. You cannot simply be satisfied by winning the votes of people who are older.”

AD

People who made up their minds a long time ago: There is a section of the Democratic Party that has been Sanders-or-bust for months, and no momentum shift in the primary nor major Democratic Party endorsements for Biden has changed it.

Biden is winning those who are making up their minds now. While Biden continues to win late-deciding voters, Sanders continues to win voters who said they would support him even before the Iowa caucuses in February.

This small but notably intransigent section of the party speaks to how much work Biden has to do to convince Sanders supporters to back him. In Missouri, just 4 percent of Sanders voters said they would be enthusiastic if Biden won the nomination. In Michigan, just 2 percent.

Latino voters: Let’s look at the states where Sanders has done well outside of New England: They’re largely in the West, and many of them have a higher share of Latino voters. Sanders won the Nevada caucuses. He probably will win the California primary, which is still counting votes a week after Super Tuesday. Sanders lost Texas but gave Biden a tight race, largely by winning the heavily Latino border communities.

A big reason for his success: Sanders has been actively organizing in Latino communities in early-voting states, for years in some cases. Does Biden have that kind of infrastructure? Does he even need to? Two new polls in upcoming important primary states show Biden doing better than expected among Hispanic voters in Arizona and leading Sanders among Hispanic voters in Florida, who tend to be more conservative.

AD

AD

Voters who prioritize the issues above beating Trump: The issues that seem to motivate Sanders supporters the most are replacing private insurance with a government plan, and income inequality — not particularly surprising given Sanders has been hammering away on these two issues for four years.

Here, Biden has a real chance to make inroads. He has won states like South Carolina where a majority of voters say the economic system needs a major overhaul, so there’s evidence Sanders does not have a monopoly on Democratic primary voters who think the current system is unjust.

But there’s one interesting caveat from the results in Michigan: Sanders won voters who said they prioritized someone who can bring about change, rather than unite the country or being a fighter or caring about people like them.

Biden is not a change candidate. He has run specifically to continue many Barack Obama-era policies.

Does any of this even matter? A notable percentage of Sanders supporters signal they’ll need major wooing from the Biden camp to vote for him for president. Maybe they’ll just stay home in the general election.

AD

AD

That could change if we get to November and it’s a close race between Biden and Trump. The one thing Sanders and Biden supporters agree on almost universally: Trump has to go. Biden seems to be taking that direction with Sanders’s fans now.