May is not a happy month for Hillary Clinton. He loses one area code after another: a week ago in Indiana, now in West Virginia and in a week probably also in Kentucky and Oregon. In order to limit the victories of rival Bernie Sanders, she programmatically gives up her ground and allows him to push her further to the left, which presumably is also not an advantage in the main election; because this will be decided in the battle for the center.
Sanders wins but few delegates wins
And she wastes time. Your Republican opponent Donald Trump is already working to unite his camp after the controversial primary elections and develop strategies to raise funds for the campaign. She becomes embroiled in an internal party duel with Sanders, even though the outcome has long been decided.
In the count of the delegates for the party congress nomination, it leads with nearly 300 delegates – if you add the super delegates, the advantage is even 770 delegates. Sander’s victories in Indiana and West Virginia narrowed the gap by just five delegate votes each. That doesn’t change the outcome: Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic presidential candidate. But any further of these defeats hurt politically. Because they expose Clinton’s weaknesses.
It has a staggering lack of support among white male voters in states that were once industrialists or coal miners but now belong to the “Rust Belt” such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. The white working class used to be one of the reliable pillars of the Democrats, but now many white workers vote for Republicans. And: if they continue to vote democratically, they are more likely to be with Sanders than with Clinton.
Clinton angers the coal miners
When Hillary Clinton propagates the change in alternative energy during the election campaign and adds that “many coal mines and coal-fired power plants will die”, which is why aid programs for the affected workers must be developed, she arms the political opponent. When in doubt, she only refers to the first part of her statement about her: many coal mines and coal-fired power plants will die. When in doubt, coal miners and their relatives follow Trump, who calls climate change an evil voice.
In leftist states like Oregon, Clinton is also at a disadvantage against Sanders. In view of this electorate, he is moving to the left in his campaign statements, for example on health policy. He doesn’t promise a “one-time pay system” – where, as in Germany, the whole family is insured for free, even if only one main earner pays his or her individual contribution – but he wants to expand access to the “Medicare” program.
She leads among women and loses men
However, states like Oregon are not decisive for the elections. You will be voting in a reliable democratic way on 8 November, election day. Most Sanders supporters will also vote for Clinton. They don’t want Trump to become president and vote for Clinton as the lesser evil. Democrats need to worry about key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania – and about the “gender gap”: Compared to Trump, Clinton is clearly in the lead among women. But Trump’s advantage among male voters is nearly double that among women.
In this 2016 election year full of surprises and hard to calculate, the traditional US election map has begun to move. Trump manages to stake the states that voted for Democrats in 2008 and 2012. Conversely, due to his advantage among Latin voters, Clinton can hope for states that previously voted Republicans, such as Arizona. . But it is currently unclear how these changes affect the bottom line.
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