White House Watch: Trump Wins Over Sanders
Get ready for President Trump’s second term if Senator Bernie Sanders is his Democratic opponent next year, according to the latest White House Watch hypothetical 2020 matchup.
The new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds Trump edging Sanders 47% to 44% among Likely U.S. Voters. But nine percent (9%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Sanders, the longtime Vermont senator who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, earns just 74% support among voters in his own party. One-in-five Democrats (19%) opt for Trump who has the backing of 83% of Republicans in a matchup with Sanders.
The president has a slight three-point advantage among voters not affiliated with either major political party.
Given the large number of candidates expected to enter the race for next year’s Democratic nomination, Rasmussen Reports has opted to run a series of matchups over two-week cycles as the contest continues to develop. These longer cycles mean the matchup findings will be based on 5,000 respondents rather than the usual 1,000 for our regular surveys, and they lower the margin of error.
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The survey of 5,000 Likely Voters was conducted on March 31-April 4 and April 7-11, 2019 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 1.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has yet to formally announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, bests Trump 49% to 44% in a hypothetical 2020 matchup.
Like Biden, Sanders leads among women, blacks, other minority voters and those under 40. Trump leads among men, whites and older voters.
Forty-seven percent (47%) of all voters view Sanders favorably, including 17% with a Very Favorable view. He is seen unfavorably by 49%, with 33% who share a Very Unfavorable opinion of him. These findings are unchanged from mid-February just after Sanders formally announced that he is seeking the Democratic nomination.
Democrats hold Biden in only slightly higher regard than Sanders. But while 52% of unaffiliated voters have a positive opinion of the former vice president, 51% of these voters view Sanders unfavorably.
Sanders is the only presidential candidate for 2020 who has called himself a socialist during his political career. Democrats are far more willing than other voters to support a socialist presidential candidate and tend to dismiss criticism of socialism as unfair.
Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.
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The survey of 5,000 Likely Voters was conducted on March 31-April 4 and April 7-11, 2019 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 1.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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