Clinton, Sanders in dead heat
Survey finds ex-secretary of state’s big lead is gone as primary nears
Fueled by independents and younger voters fed up with both parties, Bernie Sanders has clawed his way back from a seemingly insurmountable deficit to draw nearly even with Hillary Clinton in California, a new poll finds less than two weeks before the Golden State’s primary.
The Vermont Senator now trails Clinton 46 to 44 percent among likely voters, a virtual dead-heat well within the margin of error of the survey conducted by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
While even losing California’s June 7 primary wouldn’t stop Clinton from claiming
the Democratic nomination, it would send her limping out of the gates in the general election against Donald Trump. The disappointing poll numbers come as Clinton prepares Thursday for rallies in San Jose and San Francisco, reeling from Wednesday’s report from the State Department’s Inspector General sharply criticizing her use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.
“She’s not winning in a blaze of glory; she’s winning in a cloud of ambiguity,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
Even though Clinton may well lock up enough delegates for the nomination before voting here comes to a close, California’s significance as the nation’s largest and most diverse state is not lost on either candidate. Clinton has opened up nine field offices, set up phone banking operations calling voters in seven languages, and will start airing ads in parts of the state featuring labor icon Dolores Huerta and actor Morgan Freeman.
Sanders, meanwhile, has crisscrossed the state over the last two weeks, drawing an estimated 90,000 supporters to 14 rallies. He also just bought $1.5 million worth of television ads, which soon will be airing in the Bay Area.
The PPIC poll came as no surprise to either camp. “Bernie has been campaigning hard out here getting his message out, and we’re seeing that it’s working,” said Sanders’ California pollster Ben Tulchin.
Dan Newman, a political strategist whose San Francisco-based firm has done work for Clinton, said both campaigns had assumed the race was close, which is “why both candidates are running laps around the state for the next two weeks.”
Sanders started the campaign a year ago trailing Clinton in California by more than 50 percentage points in early polls, but he had pared down her lead to single digits earlier this year. PPIC’s last poll in March found Sanders trailing by seven percentage points.
His continued rise stems in part from party rules that allow independents to vote in the Democratic primary as well as fellow rabble-rouser Trump’s sudden triumph over the Republican field, said PPIC President and CEO Mark Baldassare.
“Here, you’re seeing people express their dissatisfaction with the status quo through Bernie Sanders,” he said. “This has made for the race tightening up.”
In many ways, California’s electorate looks similar to that of other states. Clinton leads Sanders by 8 percentage points among registered Democrats, while Sanders has a comfortable lead among independents and two-thirds support among voters under 45.
The big difference, Baldassare said, is that Sanders’ youth appeal appears to have helped him win over large numbers of minority voters in California, a demographic that Clinton has dominated elsewhere.
The poll, conducted May 13 to 22, showed Clinton leading among whites 47 percent to 41 percent and Latinos 52 percent to 43 percent. But Sanders is leading overall among nonwhites 47 percent to 46 percent. Baldassare chalks that up to the fact that minority voters in California tend to be younger.
“It’s counterintuitive based on what we’ve seen from other states, but that is what is so interesting and different about California,” he said. “If you connect all the dots here, we’re a diverse state with a youthful immigrant population, and Sanders has such strength among youthful voters.”
The big question, he said, is whether Sanders’ base of young independents end up voting. They have a bad track-record when it comes to casting ballots in primaries, and independent voters have to specifically request a Democratic ballot, which many might not know to do.
“It’s just a big question mark,” Baldassare said.
While Clinton and Sanders keep battling for Democratic votes, the poll found that Trump had begun coalescing California Republicans around him.
Two-thirds of GOP voters said they planned to back the real estate mogul. Trump’s support soared to 78 percent when Republicans were asked to choose between him and Clinton.
Overall, among all likely voters, Clinton led Trump by 10 percentage points; Sanders led him by 17 percentage points. Three out of four Sanders’ voters said they would back Clinton against Trump in November.
The survey of 1,704 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points for all likely voters and plus or minus 5.7 percentage points for Democratic Party likely voters.
If Sanders prevails in the primary, it would mark the first time a Clinton has lost in California — a streak that stretches from Bill Clinton’s cakewalk over then-former Gov. Jerry Brown in the 1992 primary to Hillary Clinton’s 8point victory over Barack Obama in the 2008 primary.
If Clinton lost in California, it could strengthen Sanders’ hand in extracting policy concessions and moving the party further left, but that is a price she will likely have to pay to unify the party no matter how she fares, Pitney said.
“She just has to work the state hard and whatever the outcome, find a way to patch things up with Sanders and get him on board as soon as possible,” he said. “If they mend fences by September, no one will remember the June primary.”