Monday, June 6, 2016

How Many People Follow Bernie From Rally To Rally Like Deadheads?

Has anyone been investigating this? There is no doubt that if the Democratic Presidential nomination had been decided by attendance at candidates' rallies, Bernie would've won by a mile. Back in the run-up to the New York primary, I heard journalists exclaiming at the size of the crowds at Bernie's rallies, and wondering whether those huge crowds meant that Bernie would get more votes in the primary than the polls indicated.

He didn't. And ever since then, I've wondered whether the size of those crowds might be due in large part to huge numbers of people following Bernie all over the country in order to attend every rally, the way that huge numbers of fans, known as Deadheads,


followed the Grateful Dead from concert to concert. I look at photos like that and I kind of get a Bernie vibe: white-bread vegans, ethnically un-diverse, often barefoot and yet with enough disposable income to not have jobs and travel all over the country, following the band. In short: rich white kids who think they're radicals. Sure sounds like Bernie Bros and Sisters to me. I don't know, maybe that's just me.

Still, it would be statistically interesting to know how many different individuals have attended Bernie's rallies, and how many people literally followed his campaign and attended multiple rallies.

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