Nate Silver writes:

The Sen. Bernie Sanders rally that I attended on the evening before the New Hampshire primary drew a reported 7,500 people — about twice as many as his actual 3,867-vote margin of victory in the primary the next day. I say that not to endorse crowd sizes as an alternative to the polls. (Despite the large crowds, Sanders slightly underperformed his polls in New Hampshire, in fact.) Nor do I mean to imply that Sanders won in New Hampshire because of the rally. (It was held before a largely student audience at the University of New Hampshire — people who were already likely to vote for Sanders.) But it does go to show how razor-thin the margins have been so far in the primaries. The voters who pushed Sanders past former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in New Hampshire might only halfway fill a college hockey rink.

But the rally was also impressive. It was full of star power, including speakers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, actress Cynthia Nixon and political activist Cornel West — all of whom were introduced to the crowd like heavyweight boxers — along with a concert by The Strokes. In between the big names, Sanders organizers gave students detailed voting instructions. Everything was tightly scripted. It was a show of force.

What the rally largely lacked, though, were attempts to persuade voters who weren’t already aboard the Sanders train. On the contrary, the emphasis was on turning out the faithful, and the faithful were all presumed to be on board with Sanders’s lefty platform. Nixon, for instance — who earlier had drawn a round of boos for a brief reference to Hillary Clinton, which she quickly shushed — said that nominating a moderate candidate would ensure that nobody showed up on Election Day.

But moderates were once a source of strength for Sanders. Four years ago, Sanders won voters who identified as moderate by 20 points in New Hampshire, about the same as his overall margin of victory in the state over Clinton. This time around, Sanders finished third among moderate voters, getting 16 percent of the moderate vote compared with 27 percent for both Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

So, let’s talk about the “c” word: ceiling. [Continue reading…]