Bernie Isn’t Persecuted. He’s Just Losing
Overall the TV Networks Have Been Fair to Sanders
Some Sanders supporters seem to think that the major television networks have sandbagged his campaign by refusing to cover it. Unable to disseminate his message via earned media, the reasoning goes, Sanders never got a chance to convert the eager masses to his righteous cause.
They’re wrong.
Based on data from the Internet Archive’s Television News Archive, and publicly available polling from Huffington Post Pollster, Bernie received remarkably fair treatment from the networks. He’s losing, despite running an impressive campaign, because his melange of message and persona hasn’t persuaded the majority of Democratic primary voters — let alone the majority of Americans.
The Numbers
Until very recently, Bernie has moved up steadily in nationwide polling, rising from single digits to north of 45%. That’s a testament to a well run campaign, unflinching message discipline, and profound divisions within the Democratic coalition.
This workmanlike growth took place as other progressive alternatives to Clinton quickly faltered, or failed to gain momentum at the outset.
Biden‘s polling share grew after he expressed tentative interest in running, but came mainly at the expense of Clinton. Thus when Biden withdrew, Clinton’s numbers recover in almost equal proportion. Meanwhile, Sanders just kept growing.
So has Bernie’s growth in the polls been reflected in his coverage by the television networks?
Before answering that question head-on, let’s first look at how the networks reported on Clinton. Beginning the cycle as the presumptive nominee, Clinton has seen her coverage share erode in three phases, creating a descending staircase of ratings.
During the first half of 2015, when coverage of the primary was comparatively sparse, Clinton dominated as indistinguishable from the race itself. The second half of 2015, the period of the Biden flirtation, saw a swoon and then partial recovery in her poll numbers. Clinton experienced a corresponding reduction in her television coverage at this stage. Finally, at the beginning of 2016, her coverage and polling numbers essentially synced. Clinton has remained marginally over-covered in 2016, but only slightly so.
For a comparison, let’s see how the networks covered Bernie.
Interestingly, Bernie enjoyed almost spot on coverage until last November. The networks then dipped slightly while his poll numbers continued to rise. Heading into the new year, the networks snapped back and over-covered Sanders for much of the first two months of the year. Since March, the networks have been in rough alignment with Bernie’s polling share.
Of course, this data reflects the percentage of raw mentions about the Democratic primary each candidate enjoys. It doesn’t capture the valence of the comments made on TV. But from an earned media standpoint, Bernie doesn’t have any ground for complaining.
Let’s have a look at how the individual networks treated Bernie. Here’s the full chart, including standard errors and data points.
That’s hideously hard to read. When we remove the standard errors markings, some rough patterns emerge.
Let’s strip down the graph one more time to just the lines.
Broadcast networks have a late autumn spike when it comes to covering Bernie that the cable networks simply don’t have. If we aggregate these terms into broadcast and cable, this should be fairly clear.
Broadcast affiliates covered Sanders significantly more than cable outlets during the last quarter of 2015, but by 2016 they were moving almost in lockstep.
Despite this differential treatment, Sanders just kept growing his polling share at a steady rate. So in sum, while Sanders could grumble that cable lagged his growth in the polls at the end of last year, the gap is hardly enough to explain a loss to Clinton that is now all but inevitable.
What Does It All Mean?
Shifting from the empirical to the editorial, why is Bernie losing if his message is getting the amount of coverage his polling share says it deserves?
Bernie has two powerful assets: a message, and credibility delivering it. That message has three parts:
- The economy sucks
- It sucks because it has been rigged to serve the interests of the wealthy
- The wealthy are able to rig it thanks to a corrupt campaign finance system
This message is simple, straightforward, and persuasive to many people on the left, right, and center. It also happens to be un-moored from reality, but that’s a subject for another post.
The short answer is that Bernie’s losing because he doesn’t appeal to a sufficiently broad coalition within the Democratic Party.
During the Obama administration, the ideological left has grown in power and proportion within the Democratic Party. As a result, Sanders has been able to surf a narrower coalition than Obama’s to an almost-draw with Clinton.
Nonetheless, Bernie has not done much to expand his appeal beyond the left wing of the party. His performance with minorities could at best be called uneven. He struggled mightily in the South even among working class whites. He let Clinton run up large margins there and hasn’t been able to close the gap despite winning majorities in many subsequent contests, especially in the Midwest, where Clinton is widely disliked.
Elsewhere I wrote the following about Bernie:
Yet there’s more to say about Sanders than that he picked the wrong half of a profoundly divided party, energized it, but found out the votes simply weren’t there. Sanders has at times been an able and effective congressional broker. He has a record on which to run. Yet his entire campaign is built on his rhetorical consistency. This is both strength and weakness. Sanders has held the same ideas for five decades, which contrasts favorably with an opponent who can’t sustain a position for five minutes.
However consistency can bloom from principle and pig-headedness alike — the hobgoblin of little minds, etc. To the anti-political, consistency is appealing, and so Bernie has his believers. Yet a man who sounds like a broken record about breaking up the big banks ought to know the basics of financial regulation. Bernie doesn’t. So to the unconverted he looks inexplicably unprepared for the Oval Office.
Put bluntly, most Democrats do not believe that the problems facing our country stem from an insufficiently regulated campaign finance system. Nor do most Democrats believe that Sanders is the right vessel to achieve their ends. He’s run an outstanding campaign, and has much to be proud of on that front. However, the man and the message have never been more than the cri de coeur of the left, and as a result, never had a realistic chance at beating Clinton.
In closing, a disclaimer: I don’t have a horse in the Democratic race. Alas, I no longer have a horse in my own party’s race. But I was asked to look into how television is treating Bernie, and the numbers are the numbers. If you want my longer, editorial take on the primaries writ large, you can read it here.
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