honorentheos wrote:The Arizona poll followed the ideological line pretty closely. Biden and Sanders have the best name recognition but sat on opposite ends of the results. Moderate Democrats polled better than progressives. Bloomburg was in the middle. Buttigieg arguably has the least name recognition advantage among the five included in the poll yet polled as being able to beat Trump.
Put simply, states where the election could go either way aren't safely a toss up depending on which Democrat gets the nomination. Sure, there are voters who say they view other candidates less favorably and tell pollsters they might sit the election out, but who would vote D come November. But that's probably more of an issue with Sanders voters than it is Biden voters.
It's not that there aren't marginal differences in candidates between state to state. There are, and they can be significant inside of tight elections. Once you clear up that they they don't
have to be significant because the differences are marginal, then it becomes easy to answer your question that a Sanders' supporters would prefer Sanders to be doing sufficiently well at a national scale that Arizona tips into his column. Is he weaker in that state? It seems distinctly possible. By contrast, his polling tendency so far is one of the stronger Democrat candidates in the rust belt states because this isn't simply about how "moderate" a candidate is seen as. I wrote it in a flippant manner, but Sanders identity plays better in some states than others, and the upper Midwest is better for him.
Regarding your point on socialism, I think we just need to clear up what is going on. Is it bad for a certain segment of voters to be viewed as a socialist? Yeah, for sure. It's important to distinguish this from many of those same voters actually being concerned about socialism. Donald Trump is abusing Presidential "national security" control over tariffs to place a sizable tax on Americans, then redirecting billions of Federal monies into the hands of farmers - largely the wealthiest farmers. That sure sounds socialismish, and a particularly noxious variant at that, but I doubt this moving
any "Omg! socialism!" votes at all. The people who understand what's going on there in ideological terms are not persuadable voters. The squishier voter worried about socialism isn't necessarily thinking this through like you might.
The upshot for Sanders here is that he has a lot of freedom to be socialist in terms of policy advocacy without it mattering
too much. Being perceived as quite leftwing probably hurts more than it helps to some extent. That is correct, but this point has to be taken in the context of candidates being a mix of strengths and weaknesses. Thinking that you can just pick the most moderate candidate and consider that self-same with being the most electable would be incorrect, especially since "moderation" is a tricky concept and a free-floating target at times.
Given that the Republicans are running a fascist, and we all agree that person has a good chance at winning, I think we all kind of implicitly accept that "the moderate is the strongest!" is too reductionist. When it comes to Sanders, I think Sanders supporters think his positives adequately counterbalance the attack of not being moderate enough. Maybe this isn't great for him in Arizona, but he isn't nationally weak in all swing states, and the Arizona election isn't necessarily going to be decided in the small window where individual candidate differences are decisive.
The head-to-head polls you cited are way too swingy and probably have a lot of primary influence on them. I can say with confidence that you're not going to be in a universe where Joe Biden would've beat Trump by 3 in Arizona, but Sanders would've lost by 13 or visa versa.