Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would have beaten Donald Trump by a historic margin if he had been the Democratic nominee, according to a private pre-election poll provided to The Huffington Post.
The national survey of more than 1,600 registered voters, conducted by Gravis Marketing two days before the general election, found that
Sanders would have received 56 percent of the vote while Trump would have won 44 percent. The poll was commissioned and financed by outgoing Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, a Democrat who endorsed Sanders in the presidential primary.
The last election result that decisive was Ronald Reagan’s victory over Democrat Walter Mondale in 1984.
Crucially, independent voters, who made up nearly one-third of the general election voters this year, favored Sanders over Trump, 55 percent to 45 percent, the poll found. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, lost independents 48 percent to 42 percent, according to exit polls.
Although the Gravis poll did not show state-level results, it is safe to assume that any candidate with that type of lead in the popular vote, if the poll is accurate, would win the electoral college handily.
For Grayson, who lost a Senate primary campaign in Florida to centrist Democrat Patrick Murphy, who then lost to incumbent Marco Rubio, the poll shows that Democrats err by looking for business-friendly, moderate politicians, even if they end up running on a liberal platform, as Clinton did.
“As we contemplate the dark days ahead, and then as we suffer through them, we Democrats should remember that it could have been entirely different. All we had to do was to elect a Progressive as President ― just as a large majority of Americans really wanted,” Grayson said in an email.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0c4b63b0c6928
Seethe
