What Went Down At The Univision Democratic Debate

Tonight, we saw a capital-D Democratic debate. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders argued over who was more liberal on immigration, economic inequality, energy and other topics. Some questions were asked both in English and Spanish. But did Clinton or Sanders put together a game-changing performance? My guess is that neither of them did, and my colleagues mostly agreed. When asked to grade each candidate’s debate performances on how much they helped or hurt their chances of winning the nomination, Sanders came out slightly ahead of Clinton; he averaged a B+, and she averaged a B. (I gave both of them a B.)

FiveThirtyEight’s Democratic debate grades

	AVERAGE GRADE	HIGH GRADE	LOW GRADE
Bernie Sanders	B+	A-	B-
Hillary Clinton	B	B+	C

Clinton faced tough questions from the moderators about her emails and Benghazi, which put her on defense more than Sanders. Sanders, for his part, faced tough questions on his immigration voting record and his views on socialist regimes in Latin America. One other thing that became clear from tonight’s debate is that Clinton and Sanders are getting on one another’s nerves. In the last debate, Sanders snapped at Clinton for interrupting him. This time Clinton snapped at Sanders for interrupting her. That’s a far cry from the squabbling in the Republican debates, but it’s clear that both of them recognize they have a lot on the line. Sanders knows that he must capitalize on his win in Michigan yesterday. He trails Clinton by more than 200 pledged delegates, and the terrain next Tuesday isn’t great for him. While there’s been a lot of concentration on Ohio (where the polls have been bouncy), Clinton is a heavy favorite heading into the delegate-rich states of Florida, Illinois and North Carolina, where the polling averages give her leads of anywhere from 20 to 37 percentage points. Sanders better hope that either the polls are off in those states like they were in Michigan (a possibility), or the public saw tonight differently than we did (also a possibility). Otherwise, his victory in Michigan will simply be a battle won in a war lost.

One of the people commenting on our live blog started her own mini-debate about whether Clinton has morphed ideologically to match Sanders. As we move forward, both candidates will have to begin thinking about how their primary battle will shape the general election. It will be interesting to see how and when both parties start tacking back to the center, and whether the primary voters activated by non-establishment candidates will remain as passionate during the general election.

As we come to a close here, I wanted to put in perspective what a large audience Democrats are getting on Univision. According to a 2013 Pew Research Center report, Univision has more viewers than the Fox network and nearly the same number as ABC. Moreover, Univision tops all of the English-speaking networks in terms of viewers ages 18 to 49.