The poll first accurately predict Jimmy Carter’s 1976 upset victory in their 1975 mock election. The 2007 poll accurately predicted Barack Obama’s presidential win in 2008, and in 2011, his narrower 2012 reelection win, after the same system had been used to astonishingly predict every presidential election over the last 40 years.
The WIU mock election, in which thousands of students from multiple schools form parties and caucuses and play out a small-scale election over the course of several days, has Bernie Sanders beating Hillary Clinton in 22 out of 26 primary states; Hillary Clinton survives past Super Tuesday, but loses out before the month of March is concluded.
While the participating schools accurately predict the next presidency; their record with picking vice presidential running mates and opposing party candidates on the losing ticket, the school picked Martin O’Malley as Sanders’ running mate. In 2007, they had John Edwards for a Barack Obama's running mate, while saying the GOP ticket would be Giuliani / McCain. The school made up for that however in 2011, when they (somehow) accurately predicted the 2012 Mitt Romney / Paul Ryan Republican ticket.
The Republican student body put together a Jeb Bus h/ Marco Rubio ticket for 2016, and if you thought WIU’s primary results were interesting, get a load of this: The Sanders / O’Malley ticket beats the Bush / Rubio ticket in a blow-out landslide win in which Sanders accumulates 404 electoral votes, to 114 electoral votes for Bush.
And then there is the new McClatchy-Marist poll, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads Republican candidate Donald Trump by a landslide margin of 12 percentage points, 53 to 41. In the McClatchy poll, Sanders also leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) by a landslide margin of 10 points, 51 to 41.
The huge Sanders advantage over Trump is not new. In the last four match-up polls between them reported by Real Clear Politics, Sanders defeated Trump by margins of 12, 9, 9 and 2 percentage points.
It is truly interesting polling data suggests Sanders has a lead over Trump that could be so huge he would win a landslide victory to occupy the White House, with a win margin almost certain to lead Democrats to regain control of the Senate and possibly the House of Representative , too — if, of course, the three polls that show Sanders beating Trump by 9 to 12 points reflect final voting in the presidential election.
These polls highlight to issues: First, the national reporting of the presidential campaign completely fails to reflect Sanders's strength in a general election, especially against Trump, and against Bush as well; and Second, Sanders' strength in general election polling supports the argument I have been making in recent years, that American voters favor progressive populist positions which, if taken by Democrats in the general election, would lead to a progressive populist Democratic president and at least far greater Democratic strength in Congress, if not control itself.
Conservative Republicans loudly and often proclaim, parroted by the mainstream media, American voters are right of center in their political views, and they, not Democrats, best represent American values. Conservative Republicans, and the mainstream media, would have us believe Senator Sanders and other liberals take positions that are far too "left" to attract the majority of American voters. Issue polling shows, issue by issue, and increasingly in general election match-up polling of Republicans losing big against Sanders, American voters are much more progressive than popular media opinion dictates.
CNN Video: Reliable mock election predicts a Sanders victory
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