A new national poll finds Bernie Sanders topping President Donald Trump by six points in a 2020 head-to-head race.
The Morning Consult/ Politico poll of 2,536 respondents has Sanders on top 42 percent to 36 percent.
“That says a lot about the firepower he can bear,” said Nina Turner, former Ohio state senator and the current president of pro-Sanders political group Our Revolution.
The veteran senator from Vermont ran in 2016, narrowly losing out to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
While Sanders’ margin over Trump is smaller than the 9-point edge of a generic Democratic candidate, the vibe among some is that it bodes well for any plans he may have for staging another run.
“The closer we get to knowing who is going to run, I think that generic factor goes away,” said Turner.
Overall, pollsters found that seven in 10 Democrats said they would support Sanders’s 2020 run, while 9 percent said they would support Trump. Sanders is already on record with his plans to seek another term in the Senate as an independent in 2018 but has not indicated if he plans on making another run for the Oval Office.
Earlier this month, the same poll also found that former vice president Joe Biden also holds a comfortable margin over Trump looking ahead to 2016. Pollsters found Biden topping Trump 46 percent to 35 percent, with Biden bagging 78 percent of Democratic support.
Meanwhile, a recent Lucid survey found that Trump’s support from his Republican base is also showing signs of slippage.
The survey found that 71.85 percent of GOP voters now approve of Trump’s White House job performance, down a full three points from the week before, when he registered a rating of better than 75 percent.
Overall, pollsters found Trump’s approval rating now stands at just 35 percent.
In addition, nearly three in five voters in a new Quinnipiac University poll agreed they are now convinced Trump is not fit to be the nation’s president.
Pollsters found that 57 percent of voters concurred about Trump’s unfitness for office, representing a new high to the same question that was asked during polls taken over the last two months.
Overall, the number of respondents now disapproving of Trump’s job performance during his first year in office stands at 58 percent, compared to just 35 percent of those polled offering positive reviews.
“The question is how does the president turn it around,” said Democratic strategist Scott Bolden, adding that Republicans need Trump to show marked improvement heading into elections in 2018 and 2020.
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