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The Sanders Surge that saw the Vermont senator’s stock rise in Iowa has continued, with a new poll showing the socialist presidential contender leading all his rivals nationally — including longtime front-runner Joe Biden.
The poll, conducted by SSRS for CNN, has independent Bernie Sanders ahead of the ex-vice president by three points.
“Overall, 27% of registered voters who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents back Sanders, while 24% favor Biden,” reports CNN. “The margin between the two is within the poll’s margin of sampling error, meaning there is no clear leader in this poll. Both, however, are significantly ahead of the rest of the field, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 14% and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 11%. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg lands at 5% in the poll, while Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and businessman Andrew Yang each hold 4% support. Businessman Tom Steyer has 2%. No other candidate reaches 1% support.”
“Sanders has gained 7 points since the last CNN poll on the race in December,” the site continues. “Since that survey, the Vermont senator has also made gains in early-state polling, including CNN’s survey with the Des Moines Register in Iowa, where the first caucuses of the cycle will be held in less than two weeks.”
“Sanders has made gains nearly across the board, clearly pulling away from Warren among liberals (33% back Sanders, while 19% support Warren in the new poll), a group where the two had been running closely through much of the fall,” CNN also informs. “Sanders has also pulled about even with Biden among voters of color (30% for Sanders, 27% for Biden).”
While it’s not exactly clear, “voters of color” presumably include “Hispanics” even though their designation is not racial but ethnic (there are Hispanics of different races).
Moreover, while CNN’s last line above indicates what sources such as the Intelligencer state explicitly — that “the race has fundamentally changed” — this may be a flawed analysis. After all, a mid-December NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey found essentially the same result, with Sanders also leading Biden by three points among non-white voters, in that case 29 to 26 percent.
In fact, this lead might be “because of Sanders’ strength with younger voters of color and Latinos,” as NPR theorized at the time. In other words, there may be no reason to believe Sanders has cut into Biden’s lead with black voters, who’ve thus far been buttressing his campaign.
The December poll also mirrored the current one in showing a statistical dead heat (within the margin of error) between the two Democrat frontrunners, in its case 24 to 22 percent in Biden’s favor. What has changed since then is that the two septuagenarians have further separated themselves from the field.
As for CNN’s poll, it also reveals Democrats’ priorities. Among the registered Democrats/Democratic-leaning independents, respondents prefer a candidate who could beat President Trump over one who agrees with them on important issues — 57 to 35 percent. Forty-five percent believe Biden has the best chance to do so, while only 24 percent think Sanders does. On the other hand, 30 percent state that Sanders agrees with them on important issues, while only 20 percent say Biden does.
The poll also found that both candidates lead Trump by comfortable margins among registered voters. Yet not only are the numbers closer in battleground states and there is reason to believe the president under-polls, but SSRS’S sample must also be considered.
The organization polled 1,156 adults who self-described thus: 32 percent Democrat, 26 percent Republican, and 42 percent as “independents or members of another party.” While this otherwise closely reflects national identification, Republicans were somewhat underrepresented (they’re 30 percent nationally).
Regardless, it appears clear who the president favors. “Trump has fixated on Sanders’ campaign in recent weeks, accusing Democrats of trying to sabotage his presidential bid by pulling Sanders out of Iowa during impeachment proceedings and unfairly attacking him,” wrote Politico yesterday.
“‘They are taking the nomination away from Bernie for a second time. Rigged!’ the president tweeted Wednesday morning,” the site continued.
In all likelihood, Trump relishes what the Democrat establishment fears: the belief that Sanders will be easy general election pickings. Not only is he an avowed socialist with radical ideas and a checkered past (partying in and defending the Soviet Union), but his present isn’t looking too good, either.
Just consider Project Veritas’ recent undercover videos showing Sanders campaign staffers advocating putting political opponents in gulags and, sometimes, murdering them. Part I was released January 14:
Part II was put out the next day:
Then there was Part III, released Tuesday:
Just as shocking is that the Vermont socialist hasn’t yet fired either of the violently bloodthirsty Marxist staffers.
Even though the Democrat establishment and its public-relations team — the mainstream media — want Sanders sunk, they haven’t yet used the above revelations to do it. They likely don’t want to cite a conservative source such as Project Veritas, but would rather bring Bernie down based on violation of “wokeness’” tenets. The recently failed attempt to paint Sanders as a “sexist” for allegedly saying a woman couldn’t be president was a good example.
But just imagine the GOP campaign-ad ammunition these revelations would provide and what that could do to Sanders’ national numbers. After all, you don’t have to be Scott Rasmussen on steroids to know that the senator might not be polling too well among the gulag-marked deplorables.
Image: Screenshot from Berniesanders.com
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
