Andrew Yang Jumps To 5 Percent In Early States In Monmouth University Poll
As the Democratic presidential field begins to tighten, a new Monmouth University poll released Monday reveals a three-way tie between the frontrunners — Joe Biden with 19 percent and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren with 20 percent. The survey also reveals that long-shot Andrew Yang, who continues to rise in polls and the public eye, is at three percent, with five percent support in states with earlier primaries. Conversely, The New York Times reports that Biden has dropped from 26 percent to 20 percent in these same early states.
As journalist and producer Michael Tracey pointed out on Twitter, the poll also reveals that Yang has the most significant net increase in favorability from May to August with +13. Sanders and Biden both declined in favorability — -4 and -16, respectively — while Warren also experienced a net increase of +6.
CNN reports that the Monmouth poll was a telephone survey conducted from August 16 through August 20. It reportedly sampled 800 adults in the United States and included 298 people considered registered Democrats or Democratic-leaning. The poll has a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percent.
Per The Inquisitr, Yang recently released his climate plan, which proposes to invest $4,874,000,000 over 20 years to achieve net-zero emissions by the year 2049. It focuses on moving people to higher ground, research on removing carbon from the atmosphere, and the establishment of new nuclear reactors, among other things.
Yang at 5% in early states!
IT’S HAPPENING #YANGGANG pic.twitter.com/Hb315QiUPq
— Zach Graumann (@Zach_Graumann) August 26, 2019
According to Big Think, Yang also has a plan for truck drivers that lose their jobs to automation. He plans to tax self-driving trucks and use the funds to pay for severance packages to affected truckers.
“Over 3 million Americans work as truck drivers, and over 7 million are employed related to trucking activity,” says Yang’s policy page on the issue. “Self-driving truck technology is rapidly becoming sophisticated enough to replace these drivers, and the economy is not prepared to absorb the loss of so many jobs.”
In the past, Yang has been critical of retraining displaced workers, such as truckers. Per Fox Business, he claims that the practice is not effective.
“Retraining workers who are displaced by automation is great in theory, but the data suggest that in practice it doesn’t work — these retraining programs have a 0-15% success rate,” he tweeted. “Most people who think we can turn truck drivers into coders are neither.”
Part of Yang’s solution to automation is a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 per month for every American over the age of 18. His plan has received support from Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk, who has expressed his belief in the necessity of UBI in the past.
