Registered Voters Who Stayed Home Probably Cost Clinton The Election

[Jim Lane]

24. You're confusing two different concepts

The exit polls from 25 primaries indicated that Sanders beat Clinton among black voters younger than 30. Maybe the polls were wrong, or maybe there was a markedly different trend in the unpolled primaries, but this information is certainly relevant to the question of how young black voters regarded Clinton.

You go on to find a "strong suggestion" of laziness and no mention of other factors such as voter suppression. First, there is no suggestion of laziness. You're bringing that up only to try to lump the 538 analysis in with racist views of blacks as inherently lazy and shiftless.

Second, what you contend wasn't mentioned was, in fact, mentioned:

There are, of course, a lot of reasons people don’t vote. In addition to not liking their choices, some people don’t have the time to vote (they can’t get off work, for example). Others are dissuaded or prevented from voting by barriers like voter identification laws.

This particular piece focused on the information available from the post-election Survey Monkey poll. The poll asked non-voters about their party affiliation or identification. The 538 piece used that fact as a proxy for how the nonvoters would have voted. It didn't pretend to be a comprehensive analysis of all the factors affecting the election. Discussing one aspect of the election doesn't equate to dismissing all the others.