Democratic front-runners in virtual tie with Texas voters ahead of primary, poll shows
A new poll shows Sen. Bernie Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden tied for the Texas Democratic primary.
Early voting is already underway in Texas ahead of the Super Tuesday primary, when voters in 14 states will go to the polls to pick a Democratic nominee for president.
The poll, released Tuesday, put Sanders and Biden both at 24% of likely voters in the Texas primary. Public Policy Polling found 17% for Michael Bloomberg, 14% for Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg with 10%.
The political tracking website FiveThirtyEight puts Sanders at 25% of the votes in Texas on Tuesday, well ahead of Biden‘s 19%, when calculating the average from polls in the state.
More than 40% of Democratic voters said health care was their top issue in the election.
Progress Texas, the liberal advocacy group which commissioned the poll, said, “Young voters are united, while Texans age 46 and up are divided. While Bloomberg is experiencing high disapproval among young voters, Sanders enjoys the most support from this constituency, followed by Warren.”
“Yet voters ages 46 and older are experiencing more of a divide, with their candidate preference divided largely among Biden, Bloomberg, Sanders, and Warren,” Progress Texas said.
A University of Houston poll, released Monday, also found Sanders and Biden in a “virtual toss-up” to win the primary.
“Democratic voters in Texas say beating President Trump in November is their top criterion in choosing a candidate, but their choices suggest they don’t agree on the best way to do that,” said Jim Granato, with the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston.
Texas will send the third-largest delegation to the Democratic National Convention, with 228 pledged delegates to divide up based on congressional district after Super Tuesday as well as 33 superdelegates, according to the Texas Tribune.
