A new poll of Wisconsin voters show Bernie Sanders leads his fellow Democratic presidential hopefuls, while the state remains a toss-up for November’s presidential election.
The UW-Madison Elections Research Center released their first poll of 2020 on Sunday, February 23, 2020. They surveyed voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania since these were the states President Trump won that helped to win him the 2016 election.
“Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were all thought to be part of the so-called blue-wall that was part of the Democrats base,” says Director Barry Burden. “But in 2016 all three of them flipped by pretty narrowed margins, some of them by just a few thousand votes to help Republicans win the White House.”
Regarding the April 7th Democratic presidential primary:
– Bernie Sanders: 30-percent
– Joe Biden: 13-percent
– Mike Bloomberg: 13-percent
– Pete Buttigieg: 12-percent
– Elizabeth Warren: 12-percent
– Amy Klobuchar: 9-percent
– Not sure/other: 11-percent
Burden says that the key difference that their polling found between Democratic voters came with the age of those polled. “Bernie Sanders’ success in Wisconsin and these other states is driven exclusively by voters under 50. He’s doing extremely well, and if you focus on the youngest voters, ages 18 through 29, he’s getting more than half the vote.”
As for the hypothetical presidential general election vote:
– Sanders: 46-percent, Trump 44-percent
– Warren: 46-percent, Trump 44-percent
– Biden: 45-percent, Trump 43-percent
– Buttigieg 45-percent, Trump 43-percent
– Klobuchar 44-percent, Trump 43-percent
Burden says these results show a toss-up. “These are very close competitive elections regardless of which Democrat we put up against Trump. In every case the race was in the margin of error, with a slight advantage to the Democrat, being a point or two ahead of Trump, but really difficult to distinguish them. I think it suggest what most of us feel who’ve been watching state politics that this is likely to be another close election in Wisconsin.”
See the full results here at the UW-Madison Election Research Center.
Listen to Barry Burden’s full interview with WTMJ’s Rusty Mehlberg below.