Sanders and Warren supporters fall in line with Joe Biden…..

Joe Biden has emerged from a contested Democratic primary with surprising party unity and without any serious threat on his left flank, according to New York Times/Siena College polls of the six battleground states likeliest to decide the presidency.

Over all, voters in the battleground states who said Bernie Sanders was their top choice for president said they backed Mr. Biden over President Trump, 87 percent to 4 percent. If there was a Bernie-or-Bust movement, it has either faded with the conclusion of the Democratic race, or it never existed in serious numbers in the battleground states.

Mr. Biden commands even more significant support from voters who supported Elizabeth Warren in the primary. The Democrats who said she was their top choice to be the Democratic nominee backed Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by a staggering margin of 96 percent to 0 percent — even wider than Mr. Biden’s 96-1 lead among those who said he was their top choice in the Democratic primary.

No Warren supporter in the survey — which was conducted in June — allowed for the possibility that there was even “some chance” they would vote for Mr. Trump.

The unity of Democratic voters in the Times/Siena polls represents a marked change from four years ago, when a significant number of Sanders supporters never embraced Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. According to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, she won just 74 percent of voters who backed Mr. Sanders in the 2016 primary, while 12 percent voted for Mr. Trump.

The findings, however, do not represent a change from last October, when Sanders and Warren supporters in the same six battleground states were asked whom they would vote for if the choice came down to Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. It was 89-4 for Mr. Biden back then; it is 89-3 now.

Remarkably, the challenge Mr. Biden faces from the party’s left is difficult to distinguish from the challenge he faces from the center. Together, the supporters of Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bloomberg and Amy Klobuchar back Mr. Biden by 87-6. Of course, these voters represent a far smaller share of the Democratic electorate than the supporters of Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, but few would argue that Mr. Biden faces any serious challenge among moderate Democrats.

One reason Mr. Biden does not face the kind of rejection Mrs. Clinton saw is the changing composition of the Sanders vote. In 2016, Mr. Sanders won significant support from relatively conservative, white, rural voters. These voters were no socialists, and it’s an open question how many genuinely supported Mr. Sanders or merely voted in protest of Mrs. Clinton.

Either way, a share of Sanders supporters in the 2016 primary stuck with President Trump after backing him in the 2016 general election, and they did not return to Mr. Sanders in the primary four years later. Their departure from the Democratic primary electorate helps explain the significant decline in Mr. Sanders’s strength in white, rural and working-class areas, along with the relative unity of the remaining Democratic vote….

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image…Politico