Clinton's Win Highlight Sanders' Limits
The scale of her victory reflects more than a home-field advantage, and it exposes some important limitations in Sanders’ campaign. Here are some of the key takeaways:
Clinton’s coalition is broad and durable
Mrs. Clinton defeated Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont by crushing him in New York City and its suburbs, easily winning black and Hispanic voters and holding down his margins in friendlier upstate areas. Her political coalition simply looks more like the national Democratic base than his does. In a big state like New York that is more closely reflective of national demographics, that is a decisive advantage.
Even in upstate cities where Mr. Sanders might have been a more natural fit, like Syracuse and Buffalo, Mrs. Clinton won or fought him to an effective tie.
It may be that Mrs. Clinton’s position here was unassailable all along: In 2008, she handily defeated Barack Obama in New York’s Democratic primary, taking 57 percent of the vote. On Tuesday, she was on track to beat Mr. Sanders with almost the same level of support.
The Sanders message has limitations
Mr. Sanders managed to hold on to the slice of voters who agree most strongly with his message of economic populism. Exit polls show that he won by double digits among voters who said Wall Street mainly hurts the economy and among those who want the next president to be more liberal than Mr. Obama, and that he won by a narrower margin with those who said foreign trade destroys jobs.
But in as urban and diverse a state as New York, that assemblage of voters goes only so far. Mr. Sanders got wiped out on issues of sharper local resonance: Mrs. Clinton made her more liberal record on gun control a major campaign theme and beat him on the issue by 22 percentage points.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/us/politics/new-york-primary-highlights.html?_r=0
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