Democrats view Sanders as having best shot to defeat Trump: poll

A plurality of Democrats believe that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has the best shot at defeating President Trump in November, according to a new national poll.

The latest Morning Consult survey, which was conducted after Sanders’s dominant victory in the Nevada caucuses, found 33 percent of Democrats view Sanders as the best candidate they could put up in a head-to-head match-up against Trump.

Twenty-three percent of polled Democrats said former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg would do best against Trump, and 18 percent said former Vice President Joe Biden.

The new poll comes amid warnings from some establishment Democrats that Sanders will lead the party to a historic defeat if he is the nominee.

However, most national polls find Sanders leading Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up.

The Morning Consult poll also found Sanders overtaking Biden among black voters nationally for the first time. One-third of black Democratic voters said they support Sanders, compared with 29 percent for Biden. 

That’s within the poll’s margin of error, but is a major development ahead of the South Carolina primary, where more than half of the electorate is black. 

Biden has enjoyed strong support from African Americans and has long viewed South Carolina as his firewall.

But Sanders is increasingly attracting a diverse base of support, led by Latino voters, and it appears now that black voters are giving him a fresh look as he builds momentum in the early-voting states. 

Sanders leads the Democratic field nationally among all polled voters with 32 percent support, up 4 points from last week, followed by Bloomberg at 19 percent, Biden at 18 percent, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 11 percent and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at 11 percent.

The Morning Consult poll of 2,632 Democratic primary voters was conducted on Feb. 23 and has a 4 point margin of error.