By Hanif Ghaffari 

Does Sanders disrupt Biden's calculations?

June 23, 2019 - 11:20
The game is complex in the Democrats campaign

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden does not have a good day! Although most of the public and state polls in the United States have taken Biden out of Donald Trump, he is heavily polluted by domestic polls. The gap between Joe Biden and Barry Sanders' votes in the Democratic primaries has now reached 22%. This can be left in the long run until the Democrats Elections in Iowa take place at the expense of Biden.

In the presidential race of 2008, polls show that Hillary Clinton can easily overcome Barack Obama and reach the final stage of the electoral race. But this did not happen! Obama managed to overcome Hillary Clinton in many other states after winning the small state of Iowa. Obama eventually ended up in the 2008 US Presidential Election Campaign. At this point, he defeated Republican candidate John McCain and was elected President of the United States.

Will such a thing happen to Biden? The reality is that if Biden fails to compete with other Democrat candidates in states like Iowa and New Hampshire, he can hardly continue to run for electoral competition. Eventually, Biden will have a lot of concerns about the 2020 presidential election. On the other hand, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, considers him the main rival. Some U.S. sources believe Biden, despite the charges, does not intend to withdraw from participating in the 2020 presidential election. Obama's vice presidential contender for the upcoming presidential election has been the most important election over the past 100 years.

4 years after fighting a surprisingly competitive Democratic primary race against Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, is making another run for the White House. Bernie Sanders, the old American senator, continues to oppose U.S. President Donald Trump. This confrontation started at the time Trump entered the White House (by early 2017). Sanders, in one of his most recent positions against the White House, called for an end to Washington’s support for Riyadh in the Yemeni war. Here are some of the latest news on the American political situation and polls in the United States:

How will Biden’s latest comments affect his standing in the Democratic primary?

Perry Bacon wrote in Fivethirtyeight that Joe Biden’s popularity with black voters is a huge factor in the 2020 Democratic primary. In most state and national polls that show results by race, Biden has big leads over his Democratic rivals among African-American voters. He leads more narrowly, and sometimes trails, among white Democrats. His strong black support creates the potential for Biden to survive an early loss in Iowa and/or New Hampshire by dominating the contests in the South, which tend to have large black electorates.

So with black voters so vital to his candidacy, this week’s controversy around Biden seems really important at first glance. This wasn’t a single gaffe by the ex-vice president, but really four. In remarks at a fundraiser on Tuesday night, Biden emphasized his ability to work across the aisle by referring to his relationships with James Eastland, a Democratic senator from Mississippi from 1943-1978, and Heman Talmadge, a Democratic senator from Georgia who served from 1957-1981. Both men were strong opponents of desegregation.

Making it worse, Biden specifically noted that Eastland had referred to him as “son,” but not “boy” — a cringe-worthy comment by Biden because white Americans in that era often called black adults “boy” to demean them. When Sen. Cory Booker said that the vice president should apologize for the “boy” and Eastland comments, Biden responded by saying it was Booker who should apologize, with Biden essentially describing himself as the aggrieved person in this dispute, not Booker, one of only three African-American members of the Senate. Finally, the Democratic front-runner invoked a phrase often used by older white people after making problematic racial comments, “there’s not a racist bone in my body.”

Nothing Biden said this week is likely to be featured in a class on how to discuss racial issues well. But we should be careful not to assume Biden’s inartful comments will hurt the front-runner, particularly with black voters. And If this episode does erode Biden’s support, it’s likely to be with a broad range of Democrats, not just black voters. To start, black voters aren’t only the Democrats who might find Biden’s comments particularly problematic. As FiveThirtyEight has written before, the intense coverage since 2014 of police shootings of African-Americans and the rise of Black Lives Matter have resulted in a sharp rise in the percentage of white Democrats who believe blacks suffer from both past and current racial discrimination, according to polls.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this year found that 80 percent of white Democrats feel that the legacy of slavery still affects African-Americans, just shy of the 87 percent of black Democrats who hold that view.2 According to Pew, a higher percentage of white Democrats (78 percent) than black Democrats (71 percent) said that being white helps a person get ahead in America today.

What kind of white Democrats might be the most bothered by Biden’s comments? In the Pew data, the white Americans most likely to say that blacks face particular disadvantages are those who have college degrees and are under age 30. Remember that polls of Democratic primary voters generally show Biden with big leads among older, less-educated and more moderate Democrats, while younger, more liberal and more educated Democrats are more divided on his candidacy. So one potential outcome is these comments reinforce that dynamic — this is another reason for younger and more liberal Democrats across racial lines to oppose Biden, but his older and more moderate supporters aren’t as annoyed by them. (Biden’s base has essentially shrugged off controversies about how he has touched women in the past.) My bottom line: Don’t assume this controversy cuts along purely black-white lines.

But if these comments could hurt Biden will all Democrats, they could alternatively not really damage him much at all — even among black voters. Poll after poll has found that Biden has very, very high approval ratings among black voters. For example, a survey conducted last month on behalf of the Black Economic Alliance found that 76 percent of black Democrats are either enthusiastic or comfortable with Biden’s candidacy, compared to just 16 percent who are uncomfortable or have some reservations. This was the best favorable/unfavorable of any of the candidates that respondents were asked about. And according to data from Morning Consult, which is conducting weekly polls of the 2020 race with large sample sizes — giving us more resolution on results for subgroups — older black voters really, really like Biden: He is getting more than 55 percent of the Democratic primary vote among blacks age 45 and over, compared to 34 percent among blacks under age 45. So I’m skeptical that this controversy will substantially erode that support, particularly among older black voters who have such positive feelings about Biden. In the early stages of this race, he has already weathered another issue that involves race: his treatment of Anita Hill during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas in 1991, when Biden was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I’m not predicting that Biden, in a much different primary race, wins black voters by Clinton-level margins. But the idea that black voters will swing wildly away from a candidate because a gaffe or controversy involves race just isn’t borne out by history or the data. In 2016, Hillary Clinton faced a lot of flak over a 1994 anti-crime bill that many Democratic activists now argue was overly punitive, specifically toward African-Americans, since her husband was the person who signed it into law. But she still overwhelmingly won the black vote in the Democratic primary. Biden was heavily involved in that bill — but so far, that has not dented his support with black voters. And amid this week’s controversy, several members of the Congressional Black Caucus publicly defended Biden.

In fact, Biden’s comments might reinforce one thing some black voters like about him: Biden might be relatable to people with some racist views, making Biden more electable than, say, a black candidate. It’s hard to get at these dynamics informal polls. But in interviews, I’ve done (and other reporters have found this as well), black voters often express the view that the U.S. elections in 2008 and 2012 were somewhat of an anomaly (that Americans would elect a black president). For them, 2016 was a return to normal (Americans elected a president who had expressed some anti-black sentiments). One of the challenges for Harris’s campaign, in particular, has been that many African-Americans voters, having watched the hatred of Obama from some Republicans and then Trump’s victory, believe that America is too racist and sexist to elect a black female president. In short, black voters care about “electability” too — and that is likely benefitting Biden, at least at this stage of the campaign. Lots of polls have found a majority of Democrats are prioritizing beating Trump over issues and policy. That includes black voters. The firm Avalanche Strategy, in data provided to FiveThirtyEight, found that about a quarter of black voters would prefer a different 2020 candidate than the one that they currently favor if they could wave a “magic wand” and just make the person president without him or her having to win the primary or the general election. That share is about the same for Latino and non-Hispanic white voters.

It’s hard to predict what will happen to Biden’s standing in the wake of this week’s news. But I think it’s increasingly clear that the way we think about racial controversies (with the implication that minorities are particularly triggered by them) and the black vote (assuming it is fairly monolithic) are off. Biden’s positive mentions of his work with segregationist senators may have annoyed nonblack Democrats as much or more than black ones. And the biggest question is not whether it pulls all black people from Biden — the younger ones are already kind of ambivalent about him — but whether it breaks his bond with older black people.

Biden leads Sanders by 22 points

As The Hill reported, Former Vice President Joe Biden leads his closest competitor in the field of Democratic presidential candidates by 22 percentage points, according to a Hill-HarrisX poll released Monday. In the June 14-15 survey, Biden garnered support from 35 percent of registered voters who identified as Democrats or as independents who favored the party. The next closest candidate was Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), at 13 percent.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) came in third with 7 percent, followed by former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) at 6 percent, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at 5 percent and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 4 percent. All other candidates who were named by poll participants received 1 percent support or less. Several were not named by any participants: New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska).

Biden's 35 percent matches the support rating he received in a Hill-HarrisX survey conducted June 1-2. In that poll, Sanders had 16 percent support. Biden was slightly more popular among male respondents than among female voters in the most recent survey, with 37 percent of men favoring him compared to 32 percent of women. For Sanders, 16 percent of men supported him, compared to support from 10 percent of women. Harris received more support from female respondents than males, with 8 percent of women backing her compared to 2 percent of men.

Biden had support from 22 percent of Hispanic respondents, compared with 15 percent for Sanders 13 percent for O'Rourke and 10 percent for Harris. In the previous poll, Biden and Sanders were tied among Latino respondents at 25 percent. The former vice president fared much better among African-American voters, with 42 percent support. None of the other candidates received double-digit support. In the previous three surveys, Biden was the overwhelming favorite among black respondents.

Biden has also maintained an edge among white Democratic voters, at 36 percent. Sanders was next at 12 percent, followed by 9 percent for Warren. The June 14-15 Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among a statistically representative sample of 424 respondents who identified themselves as registered voters who were Democrats or independents who favored the Democratic Party. It has a sampling margin of error of 4.8 percent and a 95 percent confidence level.

Biden, Sanders edge Trump in North Carolina

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hold narrow leads over President Trump in North Carolina ahead of the 2020 presidential race, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey released Thursday. Forty-nine percent of registered voters surveyed said they would back Biden in a match-up against Trump, while 46 percent said they would support the president. Five percent, meanwhile, said they are unsure who they'd back.

In a match-up against Sanders, 48 percent of North Carolina voters polled said they'd back the Vermont senator, compared with 47 percent who said they would vote for Trump; 5 percent said they were unsure of their pick.No other candidate leads Trump in the poll. Trump, who won North Carolina with nearly half the vote in the 2016 election, has an approval rating that is underwater, according to the poll. Forty-six percent of voters say they approve of the job he’s doing as president, while 49 percent disapprove.

“North Carolina’s evenly divided on Trump’s reelection,” said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling. “That’s not good news for him given that he won the state by 4 points in 2016. North Carolinians are moving against him.”

An Emerson College poll released earlier this month showed Trump trailing Biden, Sanders and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the Tar Heel state. Polls have shown Biden and Sanders leading Trump in several key battleground states ahead of the general election, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, all states that helped secure Trump's victory in 2016. Public Policy Polling surveyed 610 registered voters from June 17-18. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Conclusion

Sanders now considers himself the United States’ potential president! Some analysts in the United States note that Sanders’s opposition to Donald Trump and the White House policies have paved the way for his re-appearance in the upcoming presidential election. Polls recently conducted in the United States indicate Sanders’ proper position among Democratic voters. Accordingly, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have both a good position among Democrat supporters and they both have a good chance to reach the final round of the 2020 presidential elections. If Sanders can defeat Joe Biden in Democrat elections, he will have a great chance to defeat Trump.


 

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