South Carolina poll: Biden leads Sanders by 4 points

Former Vice President Joe Biden has a narrow 4-point lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in South Carolina ahead of the state’s Saturday primary, according to a new poll.

The latest Post and Courier survey released Thursday finds Biden at 28 percent, followed by Sanders at 24, billionaire businessman Tom Steyer at 16, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at 12 and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 11.

That’s a far closer race in South Carolina than other recent polls have reported.

A Monmouth University survey also released on Thursday found Biden ahead by 20 points, and a poll by Public Policy Polling released this week showed him leading by 15 points. A survey by East Carolina University found Biden up by 8 points.

He leads Sanders by 11.8 in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

The Post and Courier survey has Biden’s lead at the smallest it has ever been. He led in the same poll by 31 points in May of 2019.

But Sanders has closed the gap among black voters, and Steyer’s strategy of blanketing the airwaves with ads appears to have earned him some pockets of support, at least in the polls.

Biden faces a must-win situation in South Carolina after disappointing finishes in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

His campaign is banking on a strong showing in the Palmetto State to give him momentum heading into Super Tuesday next week, where he’ll be battling Sanders in key states such as Texas and California.

The Post and Courier-Change Research poll of 543 likely Democratic voters in South Carolina was conducted between Feb. 23 and Feb. 27 and has a margin of error of 5.1 percentage points.