Joe Biden, cratering nationally, seems to be in position to get his one chance to stay alive, in South Carolina, according to a new poll.
The Public Policy Polling survey of likely South Carolina primary voters has Biden at 36 percent in the state, with Bernie Sanders, the national frontrunner, at 21 percent.
The rest of the field: way back. Elizabeth Warren is at 8 percent, Pete Buttigieg and Tom Steyer are at 7 percent, Tulsi Gabbard is somehow at 6 percent, and Amy Klobuchar is at 3 percent.
The key to Biden’s success in the polling: his support among African American voters is at 50 percent.
African American voters are expected to make up around 60 percent of the primary electorate in South Carolina.
Of course, now, the last time a Democrat won the state in a presidential election was way back in 1976, when Jimmy Carter, from neighboring Georgia, outpolled Gerald Ford, one of two times since FDR’s last election, in 1944, that a Dem has won the state.
I bring that up to emphasize how out of place it has to be for Biden, not that long ago a nomination frontrunner, to have to tout how strong he’s running in South Carolina, a state that gave Donald Trump a 14-point win in 2016.
Diving into the numbers, you see that Gabbard’s strength, such as it is, comes from Republican voters planning to cast ballots in the Democratic primary. PPP registers that 14 percent of the electorate will be Trump supporters, and among that group, Gabbard has a plurality, at 32 percent, with Sanders at 15 percent, and Biden at 12 percent.
Story by Chris Graham
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