NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Saturday, February 1st, 2020

Poll shows strong support for Bernie Sanders in Washington State

A recent­ly released poll con­duct­ed by Sur­veyUSA for TEG­NA’s KING5 has yield­ed a strong result for Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

26% of like­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton indi­cat­ed that they would vote for the social­ist sen­a­tor, putting Sanders five points ahead of his clos­est rival, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, and far in the lead of the oth­er can­di­dates in the race for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nomination.

Here are the full results of the poll:

  • Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders (26%)
  • For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden (21%)
  • Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren (16%)
  • For­mer May­or of New York Michael Bloomberg (12%)
  • For­mer May­or of South Bend Pete Buttigieg (8%)
  • Entre­pre­neur Andrew Yang (4%)
  • Sen­a­tor Amy Klobuchar (3%)
  • Bil­lion­aire Tom Stey­er (2%)

Almost two thirds (64%) of respon­dents said they might change their minds between now and March 10th, the final day of Washington’s primary.

The results from the ear­ly states — like Iowa — might prompt some vot­ers to change their minds. Polling aver­ages pre­dict a strong per­for­mance for Sanders in Iowa, but the unpre­dictable nature of the cau­cus sys­tem makes pre­dic­tion a tricky busi­ness. If Sanders out­per­forms expec­ta­tions, it could pro­pel more Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to place their con­fi­dence in him; if he under per­forms, his sup­port might take a hit in the next few weeks.

It is unsur­pris­ing that Sanders has a robust base of sup­port Wash­ing­ton State. Sanders dom­i­nat­ed the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus­es in 2016, net­ting the vast major­i­ty of the state’s del­e­gates to Philadel­phia. (Cau­cus­es have pre­vi­ous­ly been used by the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to allo­cate its nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates, but the par­ty will use a pri­ma­ry this year.)

Although Sanders bills him­self as a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are much less sus­cep­ti­ble to “Red Ter­ror” night­mares than much of the rest of the coun­try – a fact evi­denced by the reelec­tion of Kshama Sawant (a proud mem­ber of Social­ist Alter­na­tive) to Seattle’s City Coun­cil last November.

Sanders also sup­ports the Green New Deal and has intro­duced an array of pro­pos­als to tack­le the cli­mate cri­sis, which is an impor­tant polit­i­cal pri­or­i­ty for Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in Cascadia.

While Sanders’ strong show­ing in KING 5 News’ poll was hard­ly a sur­prise to any­one, some polit­i­cal experts were tak­en aback by the depth and diver­si­ty of his sup­port. Gone are the days of 2016, when Sanders strug­gled to win the sup­port of non-white vot­ers, while Hillary Clin­ton drew on well-estab­lished net­works in minor­i­ty communities.

This time around, Sanders is the can­di­date with the most diverse sup­port. He came out top among black vot­ers (35%) and Asian-Amer­i­can vot­ers (44%), and came sec­ond place among His­pan­ics (24%, to Michael Bloomberg’s 27%). This news is dou­bly pos­i­tive for the Sanders cam­paign, as Wash­ing­ton is one of the twen­ty most diverse states in the nation – where­as the ear­ly states of Iowa and New Hamp­shire are among the least diverse.

The dead­line for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to cast their bal­lots will arrive in the mid­dle of the month where over 60% of the del­e­gates need­ed to win the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion will be allo­cat­ed, which means Wash­ing­ton will be — in the words of one polit­i­cal observ­er — right in the thick of it.

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  1. […] speak­ers at last night’s ral­ly set out their ambi­tion in clear terms: they want Sanders to not only win, but to dom­i­nate Wash­ing­ton on March 10th. As one cam­paign staffer put it, […]

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