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Zero Cool's avatar

You mentioned two bits of information in your previous comment that need to be addressed:

1) A better comparison should be the 2022 Senate Race where Senator Peter Welch by roughly 68% points in the open race. This means Sanders got at least 5%+ points less than Welch did, even while 2024 is the presidential election year. Welch actually did 2% points higher than Biden did in 2020.

However, Sanders likely got the drop in margin of victory vs his previous Senate elections because of the national environment, not as much any underlying issues he had as an incumbent Senator. A tiny margin of difference between Sanders and Harris doesn’t particularly suggest anything other than the national environment impacted Sanders’ margin of victory a bit.

2) Harris was perceived to be arrogant by the Teamster’s President, which pretty much is in the same boat of being elitist. There is no data I have seen as of yet (unless anyone wants to share) that Sanders had issues with working class voters, at least in VT. VT is not a rust belt state although I am not too familiar with its blue collar sector.

It is possible Sanders by association with Harris and the Democratic Party did see a drop in enthusiasm in his Senate race. However, this is a 5+% point swing away from Democrats, which isn’t in my view something to be too concerned about.

If Sanders won re-election by 20% or less, then I’d be concerned.

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Andrew's avatar

No, I agree with the original comment and the best comparison is comparing Harris and Sanders in 2024. She did better than he did in his own state so why should we listen to his critiques?

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Zero Cool's avatar

0.6% better is not that much better. Harris also did worse than Senator Welch did in 2022. This means enthusiasm for Democrats was higher in 2022 than 2024 in VT.

However, I did read multiple articles prior to the 2024 election that shows Sanders had a drop in favorability rating. This could explain the drop in his % of votes in winning the Senate election.

That said, Sanders is wasting his energy and not being productive with it. I’d rather he huddle with Robert Reich and others who are aiming to be more productive as they are in line with most of what Sanders stands for.

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