So far, a majority of them have chosen to support Clinton—though Sanders leads in New Hampshire, where the debate was held. (O’Malley is in the low single digits both nationwide and in the Granite State.) But issue after issue in Saturday’s debate revealed the same dynamic. Clinton simply offers a far more commanding presence—able to dive into the details of almost any policy at a moment’s notice. Yet in many cases, it’s Sanders’s dour, more Manichean views that resonate more with many Democratic primary voters like, his desire to aggressively combat income inequality, provide better benefits, and clamp down on big banks. In several places, the contrast between the two couldn’t have been more clear, as when Sanders demanded to know why the U.S. doesn’t guarantee health care as a basic right, or when Clinton pledged not to raise taxes on the “middle class”—defining it as every household earning less than an astronomical $250,000.

One reason Clinton retains a commanding lead is that—despite what you may have heard after the 2008 election—she’s a pretty talented politician. Clinton is ready with a smile, a quip, a raised eyebrow, or whatever the moment calls for. On several occasions, Clinton was left smiling with equanimity as her two rivals heatedly shouted on either side of her. It positions her well.

Headed into the debate, there was an expectation (leavened with much dread) that there would be extensive conversation about the Sanders campaign accessing Clinton campaign information from a shared database, and the Sanders campaign’s subsequent brawl with the Democratic National Committee. Instead, blessedly, the matter was dismissed quickly. The first question of the night went to Sanders about the breach, and he apologized both to Clinton and to his supporters. She accepted just as quickly, adding: "Now that we’ve resolved your data, we’ve agreed on an independent inquiry, we should move on. I don’t think the American people are all that interested in this." In that way, she closely echoed Sanders’s own comments in the first debate, when he dismissed questions about her emails. One good turn on a cyber-security scandal, it seems, deserved another.

There was much more extensive discussion about domestic terrorism. Democratic candidates are in a bind: There’s only so much they can do to distance themselves from the Obama administration, and anyway, they don’t believe the hardline policies that Republicans are pushing would work. Yet they also have to show that they’re concerned and have a plan to soothe an anxious electorate. Bernie Sanders gave perhaps the most interesting answer of the night, responding to Donald Trump’s call to bar Muslim immigrants. Trump’s decision to exploit anxiety about terrorism is all a big diversion, Sanders said, designed to distract from anxieties about the economy. In short, Sanders was invoking the old Marxist idea of false consciousness. It’s easy to mock as a classic Sanders move, pivoting as quickly as possible from security to the economy. But it’s an insightful analysis of Trump’s campaign, in which a billionaire elitist has managed to marshal the support of working-class voters behind an ultimately vague and shifting platform papered over with xenophobic fear-mongering.