Andrew Gillum is Not the “Bernie Proxy”

After Andrew Gillum won the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Florida, many stories aligned him with Bernie Sanders. CNN called him “Bernie-Backed Progressive Andrew Gillum.” Business Insider said that the governor’s race between Gillum and Ron DeSantis could be “a proxy war between Bernie Sanders and Trump.”

Change Research has been polling in this race since May, and our numbers show he is not a Bernie proxy. Instead, he may be an antidote for the longstanding gap between Democrats who supported Bernie Sanders and those who supported Hillary Clinton.

We surveyed 1600 Democratic voters in the final two weeks of the Democratic primary on behalf of the Gillum campaign and were the only pollster to accurately show Gillum with a pre-election lead. We believe that the untold story is Gillum’s success at winning both Sanders and Clinton supporters. We found that:

• Andrew Gillum did well among both Sanders primary voters and Clinton primary voters. Our analysis indicates that the majority (55% or more) of Gillum voters who voted in the 2016 primary voted for Hillary Clinton, while he won a plurality of support from Sanders voters.
• Andrew Gillum won with the support of African Americans. Our two August polls showed Gillum with about 60% of the black vote — accounting for half of his total votes .
• Younger voters sided with Andrew Gillum. The Tallahassee mayor also fared well among younger voters. Our polling showed Gillum with 40% support among those under 40 — over 10 points ahead of each of his opponents.

This coalition of young voters and African Americans reminds us of support for a major national candidate in recent years. But it’s not Bernie Sanders we’re reminded of — it’s Barack Obama.

Andrew Gillum may show a path forward for a Democratic Party that is still fractured from the 2016 Democratic primary. Our polling in dozens of Democratic primaries shows that there is still a gap between those who voted for Sanders in 2016, and those who voted for Clinton:

• The Clinton-Sanders gap persists. Most Clinton voters feel strongly favorable towards Secretary Clinton but are lukewarm about Senator Sanders. Most Sanders voters are strongly favorable towards Bernie Sanders but lukewarm to Hillary Clinton.
• Clinton voters are more positive towards all major Democratic leaders. Clinton voters are more likely to strongly favor major Democratic leaders in the House and Senate and former Democratic Presidents. 52% of Clinton voters have a strongly favorable opinion of Democrats, compared to just 28% of Sanders voters.
• Clinton voters are more solidly Democratic in their vote choice. 6% of Sanders voters say they intend to vote for a Republican for Congress this November, compared to just 1% of Clinton voters.

Andrew Gillum may be the antidote to this gap. Prior to the primary, 55% of Sanders voters expressed strongly favorable feelings toward Gillum, while 50% of Clinton voters were strongly favorable. Andrew Gillum was the most well-liked gubernatorial candidate in Florida among both Hillary Clinton’s 2016 primary voters and Bernie Sanders’ 2016 primary voters.

Pundits have eagerly argued that Democratic primaries are defined by a single question: “Bernie or Hillary?” In Florida, a win by the Tallahassee mayor — who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and served as a delegate for Hillary Clinton — suggests that the answer to that question is “both.”