Although Senator Bernie Sanders is out of the presidential race, some of his New Mexican supporters will stick with the Democratic Party and vote for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
According to a 2016 Pew Research poll, 90 percent of Sanders supporters became Clinton supporters after her nomination whereas only 9 percent supported Donald Trump.
Despite most Sanders supporters supporting Clinton, one percent are still undecided or will not vote for either candidate.
Sanders supporter John Acosta is part of that one percent.
“I voted for Bernard Sanders because he believes in a lot of the issues that I support,” Acosta said.
Acosta says he works for a non profit focusing on immigrant community education.
“Primarily he’s [Sanders] very pro-worker, he’s very pro-student, he’s pro-community and I believed that we needed a candidate that can really speak for our communities,” Acosta said.
Acosta said the selection is interesting between the two candidates.
“We have a candidate in Hillary who for me she is a corporate democrat,” Acosta said. “She disguises herself as a progressive, but in reality she’s all about corporations and about profit.”
Acosta said he believes Clinton’s stance is very damaging because at first glance a lot of people want to vote for her.
“She is progressive or like fake progressive and that to me is kind of worse than what Trump is.” Acosta said.
Acosta also says he thinks Clinton will not be picking up any of Sanders’ policies.
“Sanders’ issues are community based and it would kind of like shift the power back to the people and for me I don’t think Hillary is all about that, neither is Trump,” Acosta said. “Trump is elitist and very pro business, but at least Trump is honest about it.”
Sanders supporter Gabriela Eldredge said she will vote for Clinton because she is the lesser of two evils.
“I think that Clinton is well versed in what being a leader in our country means,” Eldredge said. “Hillary and Trump both have a past, the difference is that Trump is still hateful in his speech and actions and should not be Commander in Chief of our nation.”
Eldredge says she believes that neither candidate is what our country needs.
“The HRC campaign is doing their best to capture these Sanders supporters by engaging Sanders himself in the campaign,” said Gabriel Sanchez, political science professor at the University of New Mexico (UNM).
Sanchez says Sanders is also relying on First Lady Michelle Obama who has a lot of positive traction with young Latino and African American voters.
“New Mexico is a great case study for this,” Sanchez said. “Sanders did very well in the state and almost beat HRC.”
Sanchez said he gathered information for the poll from Latino Decisions, an organization focusing on providing accurate, independent data to facilitate critical decisions.
Latino Decisions interviewed more than 3,000 Latino registered voters in seven individual states which include Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. An additional sample was completed and then combined with the seven states which was weighted for an overall combined nationally proportionate sample.
According to the poll, 66 percent of registered voters with some college experience would vote for Clinton compared to only 20 percent who would vote for Trump. Whereas 65 percent of college graduates would vote for Clinton and 25 percent would vote for Trump.
In contrast, 54 percent of registered Latino voters with some college experience said it was important to vote because they want to stop Trump while 53 percent of college graduates had the same opinion.
Sanders supporter Kelsey Dorsett said she also plans on voting for Clinton.
“I heard a really good quote the other day while listening to NPR from Jeff Weaver who is the Bernie Sanders former chief of staff and campaign manager about the unsupportive characteristics the candidates are putting on one another,” Dorsett said.
‘The Trump campaign launches an attack on the Clinton campaign. The Clinton campaign launches an attack on the Trump campaign. And I think for many millennial voters, they say telling me the other person is bad is not enough. I already know the other person is bad. In fact, I may think everybody’s bad. So they really want to hear what they heard from Bernie Sanders, which is a positive vision.’
Dorsett said she could not agree more with Jeff Weaver.
In addition to the NPR article, Weaver spoke about issues Sanders attempted to address in his campaign. The main issue being free college education. Sanders had a plan for tuition-free public universities. Weaver said many things become affordable once America is willing to raise taxes on the wealthy and are willing to make corporations pay their fair share.
“I think it speaks to the anxiety of a lot of young people who come out of college with a tremendous amount of debt, tens and tens of thousands, or in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt,” Weaver said.
Weaver says young people find themselves in an economic market where it is very difficult to make money needed to pay off student loans.
Sanders supporter Miguel Acosta (no relation to John Acosta) says he is supporting Clinton in the upcoming election.
“I am voting for Hillary because I would rather see her win than Trump because Trump will destroy America,” Acosta said.
Acosta says Clinton will be picking up Sanders’ policies and she can have a positive change for this country.
“She is kind of like Sanders, she cared about the middle class and the low class,” Acosta said. “She also cares about students and human rights.”
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