Does Sanders do better than Clinton against Trump?

According to the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking poll, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now only slightly ahead of businessman Donald Trump in a general election match-up among registered voters, 47 percent to 45 percent.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, however, continues to perform much better against the presumptive Republican nominee than Clinton and is currently beating him by a full 12 points, 52 percent to 40 percent. Why does Sanders do better than Clinton against Trump? This is an important question that will have implications for Clinton’s campaign if she becomes the presumptive nominee and looks to win over voters in the coming months. 

Bernie Sanders continues to be the strongest candidate in the race to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, holding in recent head-to-head polls an average lead three times the size of Hillary Clinton’s over the real estate mogul.

“Democrats seeking a presidential nominee to lead their party to victory in November should take notice of the overwhelming preponderance of data demonstrating that Bernie Sanders is the strongest Democratic candidate to defeat Donald Trump,” according to analysis by Sanders’ pollster Ben Tulchin.

Some of Sanders’ strength over Trump comes from the Vermont senator’s large support from young Americans and independents, both critical voting blocs for Democrats in a general election.

But another important reason for his large leads over the Republican nominee is Sanders’ popularity among voters. “This positive profile stands in stark contrast to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who are both deeply unpopular,” Tulchin writes in a new memo released by the campaign. “Clinton’s favorables are 31 percent to 52 percent unfavorable while Trump is slightly more unpopular.”

The result is that Sanders polls stronger than Clinton in key battleground states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. “Sanders leads Trump by wider margins than Clinton in all of the public polling that has been conducted in swing states over the past few months,” the memo finds.