The first votes in the Democratic presidential primary race will be tallied in less than two weeks, and with that brief timespan left to go, a new poll has Senator Bernie Sanders with a resounding lead in support among Iowa Democrats. Iowans will be the first state to complete their primary contest on February 3, and according to a new poll released by The New York Times, Sanders leads his closest challenger — South Bend, Indiana’s Mayor Pete Buttigieg — by a full seven percent. Sanders scored 25 percent of the support, Buttigieg nabbed 18 percent, former Vice President Joe Biden had 17 percent, and Senator Elizabeth Warren had 15 percent. No other candidate finished with double-digit levels of support in the poll.
The poll results have one dramatic shift from the last time it was taken — Sanders grew his base by 6 percent, while Warren’s fell by 7 percent. Most recently, an unsupported claim that Sanders privately claimed that a woman could not win the presidency has defined the relationship between Sanders and Warren, at least publicly. The alleged remark does not at all correlate to decades of Sanders’s public advocacy, including explicit statements that he believed a woman could surely be president decades ago.
Meanwhile, Sanders has been growing his support on the national level as well. Currently, he sits in second place on average, with an average margin between him and frontrunner Joe Biden of just 6.2 percent, according to RealClearPolitics. On the national level, the only other candidate with a double digit level of support is Warren, who has 14.6 percent of the support compared to Sanders’s 22.7 percent and Biden’s 28.9 percent.
Sanders has been running his campaign as the option for Americans seeking ambitious change to the status quo in D.C., which, without Sanders’s policies, has meant struggles for millions of Americans through issues like health care costs, rising pollution, and more, all while figures like Trump line the pockets of their rich friends with large tax cuts.
Just this week, Sanders issued the public statement:
‘We are in the middle of a climate emergency. Our Green New Deal, which will create 20 million good-paying jobs, is the only proposal put forth by any candidate that is bold enough to address this crisis… The climate crisis is an existential threat, putting at risk our very existence. I have proposed the most aggressive, comprehensive plan to address this crisis. Why? Because we have no other choice.’
The climate crisis is an existential threat, putting at risk our very existence. I have proposed the most aggressive, comprehensive plan to address this crisis. Why? Because we have no other choice. https://t.co/pyBGbiLLet
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 25, 2020
We are in the middle of a climate emergency. Our Green New Deal, which will create 20 million good-paying jobs, is the only proposal put forth by any candidate that is bold enough to address this crisis.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 24, 2020
Based off this polling — these messages are resonating with people. In Iowa in particular, locals have been hard hit by Trump policies like his punitive trade wars, which have included harsh import taxes on goods from China that China has responded to with their own tariffs targeting American goods — including farm products.
On the national level, in one recent Emerson College poll, Sanders was the only Democratic presidential candidate who beat Trump — although in most polls, most of the leading candidates do come out on top. On average, he loses to Biden by 4 percent and Sanders by 3.1 percent, according to data from RealClearPolitics.
