Mediaboss Marketing

Bernie Sanders is poised to score a big win in one of the nation's deepest red states.

Sanders, 78, has a double-digit advantage in socially conservative Utah, according to a new poll by the Salt Lake Tribune and Suffolk University. The Vermont senator, a socialist, has 26.5% of the vote among Democrats likely to vote in the state's primary on March 3 surveyed, trailed by his Massachusetts counterpart and ideological ally Elizabeth Warren's 14.4%.

Meanwhile, the Democratic race for the 2020 presidential nomination's top center-left candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, has 12.1% support, the poll found. He's followed by a rival for the moderate lane, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is at 9.9%. Bloomberg entered the contest late and is forgoing the early-voting states in favor of Super Tuesday ones. The other contender for center-left votes, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, was further behind with 5%.

Sanders won Utah's 2016 Democratic caucuses, trouncing then-opponent former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by almost 60 percentage points.

[Also read: Sanders campaign predicting victory in Iowa caucuses]

While Utah, this election cycle, will host a primary election, Sanders, a former Vermont congressman and the mayor of Burlington, is still boosted by young people and liberals, despite Republicans controlling the governor's mansion and the state House. Then-candidate Donald Trump also walloped Clinton in Utah during the 2016 general election by 45 percentage points.

No Democrat has won Utah in a general election since President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

The Utah poll coincides with other Super Tuesday surveys providing a shot in the arm to Sanders surging second bid for the White House. On Wednesday, a Texas poll put Sanders in front of Biden, endangering the 36-year Delaware senator's Southern strategy. This week a separate California poll had Sanders ahead in a state he also carried last time in vied to become the Democratic Party's standard-bearer.

Sanders's lead in Utah, however, may be overstated. Researchers for the Salt Lake Tribune and Suffolk University poll only surveyed 132 likely Democratic primary voters via the telephone between Jan. 18 and Jan. 22. Their findings have a margin of error of plus or minus 8.5 percentage points.

Read the original here:
Sanders set to crush 2020 Democratic rivals in primary in deeply conservative state - Washington Examiner