A new national Morning Consult poll taken after the Nevada caucuses shows Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders leading Joe Biden among black voters, a demographic that the former vice president has thus far polled the best with.
According to the survey of 2,631 Democratic primary voters that was conducted Sunday, Sanders has the support of 33 percent of black voters, while Biden has 29 percent. It should be noted that the three-point lead is within the sample’s four-point margin of error.
Among all voters sampled, 32 percent support Sanders as their first voice, putting him in a 13-point lead over his closest competitor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg , who has 19 percent support. Not far behind Bloomberg is Biden with 18 percent.
While 52 percent of Democratic primary voters who knew Sanders won Nevada’s caucuses said he could beat Donald Trump in November, Morning Consult reports that the views on the general perceived outcome of the upcoming election remain unchanged among the general electorate.
“The general electorate’s views on the likeliest outcome in November have also been static through the first three nominating contests: A 46 percent plurality in the latest poll said they believe Trump will defeat the Democratic nominee later this year, roughly matching responses collected after Iowa and New Hampshire.”
DATA DOWNLOAD: Biden gets more support than Sanders does among black voters without a college degree, while they’re even again among those who have graduated from college. #MTP pic.twitter.com/bWofd88a1D
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) February 24, 2020
As reported by The Hill , Biden has placed the blame for his decline in black voter support on billionaire Tom Steyer, who has been investing a significant amount of his campaign’s resources in the state.
“What’s happening is you have Steyer spending millions of dollars out campaigning there, so I think a lot’s happening in terms of the amount of money being spent by billionaires to try to cut into the African American vote,” Biden told CBS’ Margaret Brennan during a Sunday interview on Face the Nation .
Biden also denied calling South Carolina — the first primary state with a significant portion of African American voters — his “firewall.”
“You said it’s my firewall, I’ve never said that,” he said, adding that he believes he will “do well” in the state.
Biden’s campaign rhetoric is viewed by many political commentators as the opposite of Sanders, who is running against the unchecked capitalism he believes is widening the gap between the poor and wealthy. As The Inquisitr reported, billionaire Warren Buffett recently appeared in a CNBC Squawk Box interview from Omaha, Nebraska, on Monday and partially agreed with the Vermont senator’s movement.
Buffett said that he sympathizes with Sanders’ belief that many people are being left behind by the United States economy by factors outside of their control. Although the Berkshire Hathaway CEO stopped short of saying the country should abandon the capitalist system entirely, he acknowledged that there are aspects of it that should be regulated.