Teeq, I watched this shitshow very closely for almost 2 years now and can honestly say that you nailed it.

Someone tried to double-talk about the results being within the margins of error (and they were), but that the result was somehow improbable (they were not; see "margins of error").

yeah, the most liked american politician of our time wouldnt have a change against the most hated one

People seem unable to think about this logically. The only reason Trump was able to get his numbers despite being the most hated candidate in history was him running against the only candidate hated almost as much he is. Hillary couldn't inspire the youth vote the way Obama did and Sanders would have.

And again there is no correlation between primary performance and the general election.

You can't call Bernie some crazy hard-core leftist when he is considered to be to the right of Hillary on several issues such as gun control.

It's you and the others who are not thinking logically since I was able to struck a chord with a few posters in this thread already ...

Despite Hillary having higher unfavorability ratings she was still able to get just as much votes as Obama did in 2012 and the most ironic of all is that Trump still won even being the most unfavourable. Favorability ratings need to be put in question since it probably has no correlation in comparison to the electoral college ... 

Yes, I'm willing to accept that presidential primaries don't tell us a whole lot but what I'm interested in is any data regarding swing states ... 

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/primaries/PA

Bernie Sanders fell short with a 200K vote deficit for a reason in the Pennsylvania primary and EVEN with younger voters accounted for in the primary but in the end he STILL got blown away by Hillary! As Brexit has taught us, you don't win an election with the least likely voters, you win an election with the MOST LIKELY VOTERS. Bernie Sanders hype with his advantage in younger voters is just that when he couldn't make up the difference for the age 45 and up group. The very old voters (65+) don't take too kindly towards progressive views like Sander's ... 

Like it or not Bernie Sanders has a weakness with older voters in Pennsylvania that Trump can severely exploit ... 

Get over yourself. Hillary didn't come anywhere close to the number of votes for Obama in either election. Bernie and literally ever other candidate not named Hillary give Trump a one-sided stomp in every poll with general election voters. Brexit turnout was extremely high in every demographic. The real cause of Brexit is the gap between england/wales and Scotland/northern ireland.

You still don't get it. Sander's demographics in the primary says absolutely nothing about him with the general populace. Don't you think Sander's would make the millenials turn out more? After all they now out-number baby boomers. 

So Trump would not recieve any more votes since he already had maximum enthusiasm yet Sanders would greatly increase it for democratic voters. You are talking about another anti-establishment candidate. I predicted Trump's win because of the enthusiasm gap that was plain to see.

You need to stop denying hard data. Hillary Clinton came in a near million within Obama's 2012 re-election. You should never put in absolute trust with pollsters if we take a look at this election and Bernie is even more overestimated considering the election was still far away at the time and no Brexit turnout wasn't extremely high in every age demographic, the 65+ and up age group were 40% more likely to cast a ballot than those aged 18-24 ... 

You can't really claim that Sander's demographics in the primary says NOTHING about him with the general populace when he had 3 and a half a million from his OWN party less likely to support his bid for election plus there's the fact that OVER 30 million people participated in it. Yes I do think Sander's would've turned out more millenial voters but that however does not mean that his likely voters are a superset of Hillary's likely voters since her older voters would've defected from voting for Sander's ... 

There's more to Trump's victory than just enthusiasm gap such as parties having difficulties holding holding the whitehouse for more than two terms. Sander's less than ideal performance in the primaries with swing states indicated he would've badly lost in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and those states are very highly correlated to other swing states like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania as well ... 

Really, no matter how you look at it there was even less paths of victory for Bernie Sanders compared to Hillary Clinton ... 

Pretty much this.

I real life Bernie got creamed by Hillary with >10% landslide margin, so no, he had no chance against Trump either. However, he told his supporters to vote for Hillary, so he had that going for him.

Trump did not even win the popular votes, id the dems would have presented any compelling candidate, they would have won the electoral vote by a larger margin as well as the all important electoral college.

But hey, we are all only playing the "what if" game, we don't really know... however what we know is that both Hillary and Donald, were largely unpopular to most people (contrarily to a candidate like Barack Obama by example who excited a good portion of the voters) someone like Bernie Sanders would have been very effective because he had a positive message that targeted a lot of the same people the Trump message targeted, as well as not having the negative image Trump or Clinton had.

Do the math, politics is all about communicating vases and momentum.