The race for the White House is continuing to heat up as the November general election approaches. Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential primary candidate Bernie Sanders is fresh off a resounding victory in the Nevada caucuses, and now, he’s got a new poll showing him as the clear frontrunner in important states across the so-called Rust Belt in the Midwest. According to the new University of Wisconsin-Madison survey, Sanders leads in Wisconsin alone by a whopping 16 percent margin, and in the nearby states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, he also leads with 9 and 5 percent margins, respectively.
In Wisconsin, according to the new survey, Sanders currently has 30 percent of the support among Democratic presidential primary voters. Former Vice President Joe Biden and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg both nabbed 13 percent in the state, while both Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg got 12 percent of the support. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar got 9 percent.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, Sanders nabbed 25 percent of the support, Biden got 16 percent, Warren and Bloomberg both got 13 percent, and — on from there — Buttigieg got 11 percent, with just 8 percent for Klobuchar. In Pennsylvania, Sanders got 25 percent again, but Biden got 20 percent and Bloomberg got 19 percent, both of whom are therefore running seemingly close behind the Senator. In that state, Buttigieg got 12 percent of the support, Warren got 9 percent of it, and Klobuchar nabbed just 5 percent.
The new poll also pitted Democratic presidential primary candidates against Trump for hypothetical general election match-ups. In both Wisconsin and Michigan, Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg, Warren, and Klobuchar all led Trump. (Bloomberg wasn’t included.) In Pennsylvania, only Sanders and Biden finished ahead of Trump — the other three included Democratic presidential candidates all tied him. Each one of these three states were crucial to Trump’s fluke 2016 election victory, since thin leading margins in each of those states gave him the electoral college advantage necessary for his win. Sanders’s already resounding lead in at least one of the key states even with so many other active candidates suggests that he’s already building the coalition needed to take on Trump where it matters.
In the Nevada caucuses, although results have been reported slowly, with about 60 percent of votes tallied, he led his closest competitor (the second-place Joe Biden) by a huge margin of more than 25 percent. With a full six active candidates in the race, he was able to nab almost an overall majority of the support! In the first 60 percent of results, he had 46 percent of the vote. Biden had just 19.6 percent.
After his victory in Nevada was declared, Sanders insisted:
‘Our multiracial, multigenerational movement is not only going to win in Nevada. It is going to sweep this country.’
Our multiracial, multigenerational movement is not only going to win in Nevada. It is going to sweep this country.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 23, 2020
Currently, FiveThirtyEight gives him the highest chance of any other candidate to nab both a plurality and an outright majority of nominating delegates for the Democratic National Convention this summer. He’s got a 46 percent chance of an outright majority — his closest competitor, Biden, has just a 9 percent chance of an outright majority, according to the calculations.
