Rampant voter suppression and inaccurate exit polls mar Super Tuesday democratic primaries
Written by: Daniel Xie
The polls leading up to Super Tuesday predicted that Bernie would maintain his initial lead going into Super Tuesday and win the most from the series of primaries. Yet the actual results were disappointing, with establishment favorite Joe Biden winning in many of these states, including states where Bernie Sanders was projected to win, such as Texas. This defeat was even unanticipated by exit polling, which projected Bernie to do much better in states that Biden carried such as Texas and Massachusetts.
As reported by TDM Research, in many states where DNC run Super Tuesday primaries were held, exit polls painted a different picture of the outcome than the results over time. In Texas for instance, Bernie tied with Biden as shown by exit polls, but lost by 4.5% when all the votes have been counted. In Massachusetts, Biden actually trailed Bernie in exit polls by 1.5%, only to overtake him by 6.9%. It seems that despite the exit poll momentum. Bernie has failed to break through in various states that earlier polls and exit polls both painted a strong momentum for with regards to his campaign.
What happened on Super Tuesday?
The question remains, why did this happen? Why did Biden win so many of the states projected to be carried by Sanders? Biden’s win can be chalked up to many factors. An important factor is that following Biden’s win in South Carolina, the establishment started to converge around him, with Buttigieg and Bloomberg dropping out before and following Super Tuesday, respectively; both endorsing Joe Biden. Elizabeth Warren, another candidate favored by the establishment, also dropped out following Super Tuesday, though she has yet to endorse anyone in the race.
With Biden’s landslide victory in South Carolina propelling him above and beyond the other establishment candidates, he has solidified himself as the favorite of an democratic establishment. They are more focused on defeating Trump then embracing Sanders message (even if it means disenfranchising Sanders supporters). Even though polls have shown that embracing Sanders’ message and winning the working class and youth vote is necessary to defeat Trump.
Another potential reason that explains Biden’s victory is the persistence of Elizabeth Warren, a centrist-leaning candidate open to some progressive policies, in the race until the end of Super Tuesday when she dropped out. According to leftist Youtuber and writer Christo Aivalis, by staying in the race, Warren has split the progressive vote enough by taking delegates in states where Bernie originally had a lead. He speculates that Warren’s goal in service to the establishment was to divide the progressive vote, by staying in the race long enough to prevent delegates from going to Bernie. As of now she has refused to endorse any candidate or divert her delegates to Bernie, which would consequently do little to help the prospects of the latter.
Given that democratic party insiders are rather obsessed with a centrist candidate and putting every single roadblock possible in Bernie’s way in order to preserve neoliberal dominance over their party, even if it means rigging the results to their favor, potential vote rigging tactics used to suppress Bernie’s political revolution should not be overlooked. We’ve seen this happen in 2016 in the Iowa caucuses, where coin tosses were used to decide ties in favor of Hillary.
This has occurred again in 2020’s Iowa caucuses, where Shadow Inc., a political technology company consisting of various Hillary 2016 veterans have designed an app that failed to release the results on time, citing software errors; an event that many leftists believe, with sufficient evidence, was an attempt to steal victory in Iowa from Bernie Sanders by centrist dark money. Super PACs tied to Shadow Inc so an establishment-friendly candidate could claim victory.
With regards to Super Tuesday, in Dallas County, where Biden won the early vote, the county is seeking to perform a recount of backup paper ballots that were not counted for whatever reason. Thus, while there has yet been news of a massive attempt at voter fraud such as with what happened with the Shadow App in Iowa, the potential for the democratic establishment of carrying out voter fraud yet again through practices such as not counting ballots properly to ensure Biden leads should not be discounted.
Structurally Disenfranchised:
Perhaps however, an important reason we are seeing disappointing results for Bernie on Super Tuesday, apart from whatever interference Warren has carried out, and the converging of the neoliberals around Joe Biden, has much to do with how insurgent candidates are “structurally disenfranchised” by a sociopolitical system favoring establishment and hard-right candidates. A way this structural disenfranchisement occurs is through currently established demographics in the states where Super Tuesday took place, which does not support a base needed for an insurgent candidate (in this case, young millennial voters).
Key to any prospect of Sanders’ victory was the possibility of a strong youth turnout. This did not manifest on Super Tuesday. In zero Super Tuesday states with an exit poll did those under the age of 45 make up more than 42% of voters, with the median for that age range being around 35%. In some states, such as New Hampshire and Texas, youth turnout fell as low as 18% and 20% respectively. By contrast voter turnout was larger for older voters in all but one of the Super Tuesday states, and this was even the case in South Carolina during the run-up to Biden’s victory there, where the older vote increased by 125%..
In this case, the structural disenfranchisement that hindered Sanders was that the demographics never favored a strong turnout for youth during Super Tuesday. Biden’s coalition in the primaries that propelled him to victory consisted of two groups, white, college-educated voters, mostly in affluent suburbs; and older black voters in the South. Both of these groups are mostly made up of older people, many of whom have lived in the same place from time to time and are much more established in the states where Biden carried his lead. These segments of the population tend to be more stationary, less mobile, and thus have set voting accommodations and behavior that can be easily accomplished in contrast to a more mobile youth base.
Structural disenfranchisement is the case for multiple reasons. There’s a mobile younger population vs. a more immobile populace that lived in the area for a long time and have set allegiances and voting behaviors. As well as, anti-democratic measures within American politics that cut off younger as well as racialized and low-income voters from being able to have a say in politics. According to the Brennan Center at New York University, over the last 20 years, states have disenfranchised voters through the imposition of strict voter ID laws, cutting voting times, restricting registration, and purging voter rolls; these maneuvers threatening the gains of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Voter Suppression in the Present Day
The damage voter suppression and disenfranchisement has done in America can be seen in 2016, where the black voter turnout plummeted seven percentage points in part due to voter suppression laws in 30 states. Voter disenfranchisement is worsened by the gerrymandering of districts in states such as Texas. According to a March 2020 Guardian report, Texas, closed hundreds of polling sites on March 2nd not long before Super Tuesday, making it harder for minorities, particularly blacks and Latinos, to vote. This move was suspected to be an attempt to make the political battleground more favorable to Republicans.
This was devastating to Sanders as gerrymandering potentially resulted in a lower turnout, particularly for racialized minorities. It also limited his growing Latino support base (of which he led the polls in with regards to Texas in the run-up to Super Tuesday), which he had been trying hard to grow in the 2020 elections. This may explain why despite initial and exit polling boding well for him, Bernie lost Texas to Biden; as his supporters were disenfranchised by unjust voting laws and regulations.
The recent defeats faced by the Sanders campaign during Super Tuesday demonstrate that while Sanders may command a lead in polls before key voting periods, the establishment doesn't need their usual dirty tricks that they’ve carried out throughout 2016 and in Iowa in 2020, as the playing field is tilted in their favor at Bernie’s expense. This is because Bernie’s lead can be easily weakened by existing structural barriers that benefit establishment democrats. Whether Sanders manages to regain his lead, or the nightmare of a Biden-Trump showdown emerges and once again disenfranchises many progressives and leftists hoping for something better, fighting against voter disenfranchisement and structurally disenfranchising barriers will prove to be more important than ever.
Important note: All democratic primaries and caucuses are run by the DNC, not any level of government.
More Articles