A Twitter mystery: would Bernie have won?

It’s been the question on his supporters’ lips ever since Donald Trump won the presidential election on 8 November.

This week the debate was reignited again when Brian Schaffner, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, tweeted out data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 50,000 people.

Schaffner used the CCE data to estimate that in Wisconsin, 9% of people who voted for Sanders in the Democratic primary voted for Trump in the presidential election. In Michigan, 8% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump, in Pennsylvania, 16%.

Political scientist G Elliott Morris did some quick math to show how those numbers could have translated to victories for Sanders.

G Elliott Morris📈🙂 (@gelliottmorris) Sanders -> Trump voters…

WI: 51k

MI: 47k

PA: 116k



Trump win margin…

WI: 22k

MI: 10k

PA: 44k



¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/0buUsnsMA9

It’s intriguing, but there are caveats. For one, Schaffner hasn’t actually presented his findings yet beyond those tweets. And, as NPR points out, “other statistics suggest that this level of ‘defection’ isn’t all that out of the ordinary”.

According to Schaffner, large numbers of people who supported Rubio and Kasich ended up voting for Clinton. And one 2008 study claimed that 25% of people who voted for Clinton in the Democratic primaries went on to vote for John McCain.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest This photo was not taken on Inauguration Day. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

A progressive mayor for Birmingham?

There was a breakthrough for Randall Woodfin, a progressive Democrat running for mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, on Tuesday, when he came top in a 12-candidate race.

Woodfin, a 36-year-old attorney and former president of the Birmingham board of education, won 41% of the vote, ahead of 37% for incumbent William Bell.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Randall Woodfin won 41% of the vote. Photograph: Bob Farley/Randall Woodfin for Mayor

The two will head into a runoff on 3 October. Woodfin, who was backed by Our Revolution, supports debt-free community college and reinvestment in black neighborhoods.

Mayhem on the National Mall: juggalos v ‘racist patriots’

An unlikely combination of juggalos, anti-racist activists and pro-Trump demonstrators will congregate on the National Mall in Washington DC on Saturday, 16 September.



The Juggalo March on Washington, organised by the horrorcore band Insane Clown Posse and their record label, Psychopathic Records, aims to draw attention to a years-old ruling by the FBI that claims the labels the bans fans, known as juggalos, as gang. The march has been scheduled for more than a year. The pro-Trump demonstration, named the “Mother of all Rallies”, was thrown together more recently and will feature people who “demand protection for traditional American culture”, according to its website.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Insane Clown Posse fans. Photograph: Jim Newberry/Jim Newberry (commissioned)

A left-leaning protest outside the White House, intended to draw attention to Russia interfering in the presidential election, was already scheduled for the same day, according to the Washington Post.

Since then activists have organized a counter-demonstration to the pro-Trump event – the aim of which is to “tell Trump’s racist ‘patriots’ to go home”.

What we’re reading

• “Rightwing radicalism holds more political and social power in America than it has for decades,” writes Emily Crockett, in her Rolling Stone piece How the Left Can Stop Arguing and Beat Trump. “But that doesn’t mean the left needs to pivot to the center or compromise its values. It just needs to fight for those values in a smarter, more inclusive way.”

• “To build a coalition, everyone has to give a little,” says Joan C Williams in the Guardian. Williams argues that compromise might be essential to success for the left: “Democrats need to prioritize good jobs for non-college grads affected by or alarmed about the hollowing out of the middle class ahead of some issues that matter more to me personally, notably abortion rights and gun control.”

Sign up for weekly news updates about the protests and activism in the US