Quinnipiac University released their latest presidential poll for the key swing state of Pennsylvania today, and the results showed several of the Democratic contenders outpolling President Donald Trump, and Biden and Sanders continuing to dominate the primary contest.
The poll was conducted from May 9 through 14 using live interviewers calling landlines and cell phones. A total of 978 Pennsylvania voters were contacted, including 431 registered Democrats. The overall margin of error was +/- 4.2 percentage points, and the portions of the poll directed at the Democrat primary voters had a margin of error of +/- 6.2 percentage points.
As I wrote earlier today, the Democratic primary field is a crowd of twenty-three candidates so far, but about half of those candidates have been polling at 1 percent or less in surveys over the past few months. This trend held with this Q poll for Pennsylvania:
Joe Biden 39%
Bernie Sanders 13%
Kamala Harris 8%
Elizabeth Warren 8%
Pete Buttigieg 6%
Cory Booker 5%
Beto O’Rourke 2%
Amy Klobuchar 1%
All other candidates were listed as getting less than 1 percent. It’s entirely possible that some of them received zero votes from poll respondents.
This poll was conducted before Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, the most recent Democrat to announce he was running, got in, but when a far more recognizable candidate like O’Rourke is struggling for oxygen at 2 percent — not to mention the embarrassing zero percent for several of the senators and governors — his entry seems unlikely to shake up the race.
Quinnipiac pollsters also asked about match-ups between Trump and six of the Democrats, with five of the six beating Trump:
Biden 53%, Trump 42%
Sanders 50%, Trump 43%
Warren 47%, Trump 44%
Buttigieg 45%, Trump 44%
Harris 45%, Trump 45%
Trump 46%, O’Rourke 44%
Biden was also the runaway favorite response to a question asking which candidate had the best chance of beating Trump, with 61 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats choosing him. Sanders was next with 6 percent, Harris and Warren both with 3 percent, Buttigieg 2 percent, Booker and O’Rourke with 1 percent, and the rest of the field tied at that embarrassing statistical zero.
The former Vice President also swept the questions asking who would be the best leader (Biden 45 percent, Sanders 11 percent, Warren 9 percent, Harris 5 percent, Buttigieg 4 percent, Booker 2 percent, Klobuchar and O’Rourke both at 1 percent, everyone else less than 1 percent) and who has the best policy ideas (Biden 23 percent, Warren and Sanders 18 percent each, Harris 6 percent, Buttigieg and Booker 2 percent each, Klobuchar and O’Rourke 1 percent, everyone else at less than 1 percent).
Pennsylvania voters were generally very positive about the economy, with 71 percent rating their state’s economy as “excellent” or “good,” and 77 percent assessing their own personal financial situation as “excellent” or “good.”
When asked if they were better off financially than they were in 2016, 54 percent said better off, 22 percent said their financial situation was the same, and 21 percent said worse off.
In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania with 48.18 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 47.46 percent.
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