Fear not: More Americans support Bernie Sanders than Donald Trump — no matter what TV says

As the Donald Trump campaign turns from farce to tribulation, it's worth noting that millions more Americans support Bernie Sanders than the Republican frontrunner.

Trump's level of national support is 30.4 percent of GOP primary voters, according to the average calculated by Real Clear Politics, while Sanders remains in second place among Democratic primary voters with a 30.8 percent average level of support.

However, as the Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch points out -- there are considerably more Democrats than Republicans.

The most recent Pew poll shows 32 percent of Americans identify themselves as Democrats, compared to 23 percent who describe themselves as Republicans -- so that suggests far more people support Sanders than Trump, based on party identity and both candidates' levels of national support.

Polling guru Nate Silver, who operates the 538.com website, cautioned that all the candidates' poll numbers are misleading at this stage in the election cycle because most voters still aren't paying attention.

Trump, the real estate tycoon and reality TV star, entered the race as a celebrity and has gobbled up a disproportionate share of media coverage that has, in turn, helped him maintain a healthy lead over his GOP rivals.

The Tyndall Report, which tracks coverage on nightly network newscasts, found that Trump has hogged more than a quarter of all presidential race coverage -- and more than the entire Democratic field combined.

Hillary Clinton -- who enjoys the most voter support, by far, of any candidate in either party -- had received the second-most network news coverage.

Sanders, who is supported by more voters than Trump, has received just 10 minutes of network airtime throughout the entire campaign -- which translates to 1/23 of Trump's campaign coverage.

That has distorted perceptions about Trump's true level of support, which Silver has estimated as 6 percent to 8 percent of the electorate -- or roughly "the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked," the pollster said.

Trump's continued success remains mystifying to many observers, and his anti-Muslim proposals are so alarming that his rivals and mainstream media organizations are openly comparing him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

But some of those horrified observers might take comfort in realizing that Sanders, the democratic socialist, has earned more voter support than Trump -- the fascist fabulist.