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Minorities, older adults boost Biden atop
2020 Democratic field: Reuters/Ipsos poll
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 [April 24, 2019]
By Chris Kahn
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Vice President
Joe Biden leads all other candidates for the 2020 Democratic
presidential nomination and draws his strongest levels of support from
minorities and older adults, according to a Reuters/Ipsos public poll
released on Wednesday.
The April 17-23 poll focused on the vote preferences of 2,237 Democrats
and independents – the two groups that may select the Democratic nominee
in most of the statewide contests ahead of the 2020 general election.
According to the poll, 24 percent would vote for Biden over 19 other
declared and potential candidates.
Another 15 percent said they would support U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
of Vermont, who ran a competitive campaign for the Democratic nomination
in 2016.
No other candidate received more than 7 percent of public support, and
21 percent said they "don't know" which candidate they would back in a
primary.
The poll measures how potential voters feel right now. Many may change
their minds as they become better acquainted with the candidates. It has
a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 2 percentage points
for the combined group of Democrats and independents.
The statewide nominating contests will kick off in early February next
year, led by Iowa.
Biden, 76, who has sought the Democratic presidential nomination twice
before and is expected to announce a third run later this week, remains
widely popular since he left the White House in 2016 after two terms as
vice president.
Sixty-three percent of all Americans say they have a "favorable"
impression of Biden, including 88 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of
independents and 39 percent of Republicans.
In comparison, 58 percent of Americans said they have a favorable view
of Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend,
Indiana, whose upstart campaign has out-raised some of his more
established rivals this year.
All three appear to have stronger bi-partisan appeal than President
Donald Trump. According to the poll, 44 percent of all adults said they
have a generally favorable view of Trump.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden who is mulling a 2020 presidential
candidacy, speaks to the media after speaking at the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ (IBEW) construction and
maintenance conference in Washington, U.S., April 5, 2019.
REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
Biden receives his strongest levels of support from older adults and
minorities.
Thirty-two percent of adults who are 55 years old and older said
they would vote for Biden over other candidates. And 30 percent of
non-white adults, including about 4 in 10 African-Americans, said
they would back Biden for the nomination.
The poll shows that at this early stage of the presidential
campaign, Americans say they will vote for candidates who have been
in the national spotlight for a long time.
Their preferences may change once they get to know other candidates
for the nomination.
More than 80 percent of Democrats said they were at least "somewhat
familiar" with Biden and Sanders.
Sixty-seven percent of Democrats were familiar with Senator
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and about half said they were
familiar with former U.S. Representative Beto O'Rourke of Texas or
U.S. Senators Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New
Jersey.
The rest of the field appears to be largely unknown by a majority of
Democrats.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout
the United States. It gathered responses from 4,018 adults in all,
including 1,449 Democrats, 1,437 Republicans and 788 independents.
(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Leslie Adler)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
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