May is not a happy month for Hillary Clinton. She’s losing one area code following 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 her rival Bernie Sanders, she programmatically gives up ground and allows him to push her further to the left – which is also presumably not an advantage in the main election; because that will be decided in the battle for the middle.
Sanders wins but wins few delegates
And she loses time. Your Republican opponent Donald Trump is already working to unite his camp following a controversial primary election and to develop strategies for raising campaign funds. She remains caught up in an inner-party duel with Sanders, although the outcome has long been decided.
In the delegate count for the nomination at the party congress, it leads with almost 300 delegates – if you add the super-delegates, the lead 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 every further one of these defeats hurts politically. Because they expose Clinton’s weaknesses.
She has a staggering lack of support among white male voters in states that were once industrial or coal-mining but now belong to the “Rust Belt” such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. White working class used to be one of the reliable pillars of the Democrats, but now many white working class people vote for the Republicans. And: If they still vote democratically, they are more likely to be found with Sanders than with Clinton.
Clinton angers the coal miners
When Hillary Clinton propagates the turn to alternative energies 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 ammunitions the political opponent. When in doubt, he only refers to the first part of her statement: Many coal mines and coal-fired power plants will die. When in doubt, the coal miners and their relatives follow Trump, who calls climate change a malicious rumor.
In left-wing states like Oregon, Clinton is also at a disadvantage once morest Sanders. In view of this constituency, she is shifting to the left in her campaign statements, for example in health policy. It does not promise a “single payer system” – where, like in Germany, the whole family is insured free of charge, even if only one main earner pays his individual contribution – but wants to expand access to the “Medicare” program.
She leads among women and loses the men
However, states like Oregon are not decisive for elections. You will reliably vote Democratic on November 8th, Election Day. The majority of Sanders supporters there will also vote for Clinton. They don’t want Trump to become president and vote for Clinton as the lesser evil. The Democrats have to worry regarding key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania – and regarding the “gender gap”: Compared to Trump, Clinton clearly leads among women. But Trump’s lead among male voters there is almost double her lead among female voters.
In this surprise-filled and difficult-to-calculate 2016 election year, the traditional electoral map of the USA has started to move. Trump succeeds in bringing states into play that voted for the Democrats in 2008 and 2012. Conversely, because of her lead among Latino voters, Clinton can hope for states that previously voted Republican, such as Arizona. But how these changes affect the bottom line is currently unclear.
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