In this post, we look at the ideological positions of Clinton and Sanders supporters among non-Republican respondents to the pilot study of the 2016 American National Election Study. We look at both the raw and weighted responses (in which survey weights are applied to approximate the demographic makeup of the population).

Even with weighting applied, non-Republican respondents who support Sanders in the Democratic primary are to the left of Clinton on most issues, especially the issue priority questions (that is, Sanders voters are more likely to say that income inequality and the environment are among their top issues). These issue salience measures have been shown to be influential in voters’ evaluations of candidates.

In the last two graphs, we also use the Aldrich-McKelvey scaling procedure (detailed in an recent post) to get a handle on the ideological positions of non-Republican Clinton and Sanders supporters. This method uses respondents’ placements of themselves and parties/candidates on the liberal-conservative scale to produce ideal point estimates that adjust for biases (or differential item-functioning) in the way respondents use these scales. Again, both with and without weighting, non-Republican Sanders supporters seem to be somewhat more liberal than Clinton supporters. These differences between the two camps aren’t massive, but may nonetheless be signaling something of an ideological split in the Democratic party.

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