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How Bernie Sanders won the election for Donald Trump.

In betting on individual States, the traders on the Betfair betting exchange, in many respects taking their steer from the polls and the so-called superforecaster Nate Silver, had Clinton nailed on in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (See table below). She lost them all to Trump, and, for many amongst the commentariat, it was these states that swung the election for Trump.

State polls had systematically underestimated Trump's standing in these states, perhaps, because of the presence of Chalabi's silent voter, and this oversight fed into the super bullish implied probabilities that were attached to Clinton chances vis a vis winning the Presidency: 85% at the New York Times, 71% at FiveThirtyEight and an astonishingly embarrassing 99% at the Princeton Election Consortium.

During the primary elections, Sanders labelled Clinton "corrupt" and assailed her for taking large speaking fees from big business and the financial industry. It is more than likely that Sanders wounded Clinton, and that many of his supporters either stayed away from the polling booths, or instead, turned towards Trump, who they saw as an alternative anti-establishment candidate prepared to take on corporate America. This would account for the five million drop in numbers between those that voted for Obama in 2012 and those that voted for Clinton in 2016.

Writing in the FT Philip Delves Broughton wrote that Mrs Clinton’s team so strongly believed their own internal models, that told them that Wisconsin was a shoo-in, that Clinton did not visit that state between securing the nomination and election day (even though the state had a Republican governor, Legislature, and Attorney General.) Sanders had won the Wisconsin primary convincingly and it is interesting to note that turnout was at a 20-year low for the 2016 presidential election. Sanders' supporters had clearly stayed at home.

In the London Review of Books, R.W. Johnson (Trump: Some Numbers) noted that during the campaign Debbie Dingell, the Democratic Congresswoman for Michigan’s 12th district;

repeatedly warned Clinton (whom she supported) that Michigan was not safe and that Trump could win. People thought she was nuts: The auto workers went heavily for Sanders, who won the primary. From that moment on Dingell feared that they – and Michigan – would go for Trump, and they did.

The Clinton campaign strategy towards Pennsylvania, which centred around having the likes of Katy Perry, Springsteen and Bon Jovi play concerts in Philadelphia, was never going to win over the more hardline amongst Bernie Saunders supporters. In Philadelphia there were almost 100,000 fewer voters than four years ago. The exit polls for Pennsylvania showed Clinton significantly underperforming Obama among voters under the age of 30 (a key Sanders demographic).

It was claimed in the media that around 10 percent of Sanders' supporters would reject Clinton, vote for a third-party candidate or,indeed cast a vote for Donald Trump. This number was more than likely conservative, but such a stance, if carried through, may well account for Clinton's defeat in Florida.

The total number of votes cast for Sanders in the Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin primaries was 2,469,855. During the 2016 Presidential Election, only 226,695 votes separated Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton across these four states; so, if 113,500 voters had changed their minds in the polling booth then Clinton would now be President.

It is highly likely, that many of the lower income voters that voted for Sanders in the primaries, and for Obama in 2012, did not vote for Clinton in 2016. It is almost certain that a majority of Sanders' supporters under the age of 30 also did not vote for Clinton, but rather for a third-party candidate.

Suffice to say there is a good argument to be made that it was not the white working class that won the election for Donald Trump, it was rather Bernie Sanders.

What it Would Have Taken to Flip Four Battleground States

S: Election results from the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections