Poll: Almost equal number of African Americans open to voting for Biden, Sanders

A Vice-Ipsos poll showed former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a statistical tie among African Americans nationwide.

The poll, conducted from Jan. 8-10, showed 56 percent of African American respondents said they would “consider voting” for Sanders, with 54 percent saying the same of Biden.

Twenty-three percent of African Americans said they would not consider voting for Sanders, compared to 24 percent who said they would not consider voting for Biden.

The poll signals Sanders could still see turnout among African Americans should he be the Democratic nominee against President Trump, even as most polls show more African Americans support Biden in the primary race.  

The Vice-Ipsos poll also shows 47 percent of Hispanic respondents saying they would consider voting for Sanders compared to 37 percent who said they would consider voting for Biden.

Thirty-seven percent of Hispanic voters said they would not consider voting for Biden, compared to 31 percent who said the same for Sanders.

“Despite frequently being described as a ‘socialist’ or ‘too liberal’, Bernie Sanders has as many, if not more, minority Americans considering voting for him as any other candidate,” said Ipsos Public Affairs Vice President Chris Jackson.

The poll also indicated African Americans are more motivated than the electorate as a whole to remove Trump from office, with 52 percent saying that was their biggest reason to turn out in 2020, compared to 37 percent of Americans overall.

Vice’s poll was based on a national sample. The pollsters warned that they asked about the general election but believed some respondents may have taken it as a question about their preferred candidate in the primaries.

The poll was conducted among 2,013 adults, including 784 white respondents, 585 African American respondents and 577 Hispanic respondents. It has a credibility interval of 2.5 percentage points overall, 4 points for whites, 4.6 points for African Americans and 4.7 points for Hispanics.