But there are millions of them. MILLIONS.
The Hidden Importance Of The Sanders Voter | FiveThirtyEight
"There’s a key twist, though, in tracking how Sanders voters are affecting Clinton’s general election prospects. Unless you break out the numbers for Sanders voters specifically, as YouGov does, you may miss their importance.
That’s because a lot of Sanders voters don’t identify as Democrats. Exit polls have been conducted in 27 primary and caucus states so far, and Clinton has won among voters who identify as Democrats in all but Vermont, New Hampshire and Wisconsin (where she tied Sanders). But she’s won self-identified independents only in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. (I keep using that term “self-identified” because the exit poll asks voters how they “usually think of” themselves — Democrat, Republican or independent. A voter’s self-identification may differ from her party registration, and some states do not have party registration at all.)"
24% of Democratic primary voters have been self-identified independents. That comes out to 5.6 million voters just if you add the current cumulative Bernie/Clinton vote totals together (which don't even take into account caucuses because they don't have voter totals). Sanders has won this group by 31 points.
100 - 31 = 69. 69/2 = 34.5. 34.5 + 31 = 64.5% of Independents for Sanders compared to 35.5% for Clinton.
64.5% of 5.6 million =
3.6 million voters.
And again, that doesn't count the caucuses. You are now looking at Sanders probably finishing this primary season with nearly the same amount of non-Democrats as the margin that Obama won the general election by in 2012.
Also, if Sanders had won every single one of those voters, he would still trail Clinton by roughly a million votes. 5.6 million independents already voting is nothing to sneeze at, but it's not enough to overcome the fact that 3/4 of the voters are Democrats. Clinton clobbers him 63.5 to 36.5 among those voters. That's
huge and explains why having all of these independent voters isn't enough to overcome that. Clinton is beating him by about six million voters among just Democrats.