Bernie or bust: About half of Sanders’ supporters say they won’t back Clinton, and 22pc say they’ll vote for Trump

In the two weeks since Hillary Clinton wrapped up the Democratic presidential primary, runner-up Bernie Sanders has promised to work hard to defeat Donald Trump - but he’s given no sign he’ll soon fully embrace Clinton, his party’s presumptive nominee.

Many of Sanders’ supporters haven’t either.

A June 14 Bloomberg Politics national poll of likely voters in November’s election found that barely half of those who favoured Sanders — 55 per cent — plan to vote for Clinton. Instead, 22 per cent say they’ll vote for Trump, while 18 per cent favour Libertarian Gary Johnson.

“I’m a registered Democrat, but I cannot bring myself to vote for another establishment politician like Hillary,” says Laura Armes, a 43-year-old homemaker from Beeville, Texas, who participated in the Bloomberg poll and plans to vote for Trump. “I don’t agree with a lot of what Trump says. But he won’t owe anybody. What you see is what you get.”

Conversations with two dozen Sanders supporters revealed a lingering distrust of Clinton as too establishment-friendly, hawkish or untrustworthy. As some Sanders fans see it, the primary was not a simple preference for purity over pragmatism, but a moral choice between an honest figure and someone whom they consider fundamentally corrupted by the ways of Washington. Sanders has fed these perceptions throughout his campaign, which is one reason he’s having a hard time coming around to an endorsement.

As for Sanders, on Wednesday he at least acknowledged that while he does not think he will be the party’s nominee according to an interview with C-SPAN.

“It doesn’t appear that I’m going to be the nominee,” Sanders said in the interview. “If for whatever reason they don’t want me to speak, then whatever. But I do think I’ll speak at the convention.”