Democrats Wonder If Bernie Sanders Could Have Beaten Trump

As Bernie Sanders' supporters come to terms with Donald Trump's upset victory this week, many of them say their candidate could have defeated him — but he was just never given the chance.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And as America continues to absorb the results of this truly historic election, one group of voters may be particularly upset, Bernie Sanders supporters. Some who voted for him still say he was the only Democrat who could have defeated Donald Trump. NPR's Sam Sanders has more.

SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: Philip Werlau (ph) supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries. And he says he was never able to get behind Hillary Clinton once she won the nomination, so he didn't vote for her.

PHILIP WERLAU: I voted fora lot to try to attain in one election.

SANDERS: Fowler says the party needed something different. And she says Sanders could have done it by winning states Clinton never could.

SANDERS: Michigan. I think he also would have done better in Florida, places like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire. The polls that were right about this outcome, in May and June of this year - those same polls had Senator Sanders winning by a 10 percent margin.

SANDERS: And therein lies the rub. Sanders supporters will never have the chance to be proven right - or wrong. But now come the postmortems. Zack Exley was a senior adviser for Bernie Sanders during his campaign. He's the author of a book called "Rules For Revolutionaries." Exley says one of the big reasons Clinton