Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Democratic 2020 presidential candidates former Vice President Joe Biden listens to Senator Bernie Sanders as former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg looks on in the seventh Democratic 2020 presidential debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, on January 14, 2020.
- Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign has been on the upswing for the past few months, and he's faced attacks on all sides as a result.
- Though critics of Sanders have suggested he's not a true Democrat, given he serves Vermont as an independent in the Senate, this just doesn't seem to matter to younger, progressive voters.
- After the Iowa caucuses, there's growing evidence Sanders is more electable than his Democratic critics have stated.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
"You know, he's not registered as a Democrat, to the best of my knowledge," former Vice President Joe Biden said of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in late January.
This point has often been raised by Democratic critics of Sanders, who is running as a Democrat in 2020 but represents Vermont in the Senate as an independent. Sanders, who faced similar attacks in 2016, signed a loyalty pledge to the Democratic Party last year under Democratic National Committee rules.
"I am a member of the Democratic Party," the pledge stated. "I will run as a Democrat, accept the nomination of my Party, and will serve as a Democrat if elected."
This has apparently not been enough for some of the party's longtime figures, such as veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, who went on a viral rant on MSNBC last week decrying the direction of the party. Carville tied this to Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist who has often been depicted as too radical by establishment Democrats.
In a subsequent interview with Vox, Carville said, "Look, Bernie Sanders isn't a Democrat. He's never been a Democrat. He's an ideologue. And I've been clear about this: If Bernie is the nominee, I'll vote for him. No question. I'll take an ideological fanatic over a career criminal any day. But he's not a Democrat."
But at a time when the Democratic party is becoming increasingly progressive and moving more and more to the left, party loyalty may only matter to a certain cohort of older, more moderate or conservative voters.
Left-wing Democrats don't care about party loyalty
For the past year, Insider has been conducting a series of SurveyMonkey Audience polls to gauge Americans' opinions on 2020 Democratic primary. You can download every poll here, down to the individual respondent data. (Read more about how the Insider Democratic primary tracker works here).
70% of Democratic voters who identify as "very liberal" like Sanders, according to the past eight polls conducted, ranging from late November to early February.
Comparatively, 41% of "very liberal" Democrats like Biden, who with decades of experience in Washington is perhaps more associated with the Democratic party than any other 2020 Democrat.
Sanders is also more popular with Democratic voters who identify as moderately liberal compared to Biden, with nearly 56% of this group saying they like the Vermont senator compared to about 51% for the former vice president.
Meanwhile, Biden has a slight edge among Democrats who identify as neither liberal nor conservative, or the more moderate wing of the party, with about 39% saying they like the former vice president while nearly 35% said they like Sanders.
Polls have repeatedly shown that Sanders has decidedly more support among young voters, who tend to lean left, than Biden or other top 2020 Democrats - including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is running on a similar platform to her colleague from Vermont. Though he lost the Democratic nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a significant margin, Sanders earned more votes from young people than Clinton and Trump combined that election season.
While party loyalty might be an issue that's disqualifying for voters who are centrists, the Democratic party appears to be moving in a direction away from that sentiment as younger generations get more involved.
Historically, older voters have participated in larger numbers than their younger counterparts, but that trend has been shifting in recent elections.
In fact, Generation Z, Millennials, and Generation X accounted for a narrow majority of voters in the 2018 midterms. This group - people aged 18 to 53 in 2018 - cast 62.2 million votes as compared to 60.1 million cast by Baby Boomers and older generations, according to Pew Research Center. Democrats took back the House in 2018, which went on to impeach President Donald Trump the following year.
Sanders' campaign has major momentum
Older Democrats like Biden and Carville, who are both septuagenarians, have warned that Sanders is too radical to build the coalition necessary to defeat Trump. Among other things, they've pointed to Sanders' lack of attachment to the Democratic party as evidence of this. When it comes to young, progressive voters, who could play a crucial role in November, this just doesn't appear to matter.
Electability is one of the biggest topics of conversation surrounding the 2020 Democratic primary season, with much speculation over who's best-suited to take on and beat Trump. Along these lines, Carville last week told MSNBC: "There is only one moral imperative, in this country right now, and that is to beat Donald Trump. That's the only moral imperative. That's the only thing I want to hear."
It's early in the race and difficult to make precise predictions about what could occur down the line, but Sanders is on an upswing.
Sanders has been dominating his fellow 2020 Democrats in fundraising, and brought in a whopping $25 million in January alone. Though there continues to be debate over the results of 2020's disastrous Iowa caucuses, Sanders appeared to be in a virtual tie for first with former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He's pulled ahead of Biden in some national polls, which also show him beating Trump in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups, and is expected to do well in the first in the nation primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
In short, Democratic critics of Sanders are running low on credible arguments against his electability as he creeps into frontrunner territory.
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