Nearly Half Of Jewish Democrats Backing Biden In Presidential Primary: Poll

Democratic presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 16 on May 7, 2019 in Henderson, Nevada. Image by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

By Aiden Pink May 7, 2019

Nearly half of Jewish Democrats prefer former vice president Joe Biden to win the Democratic presidential nomination next year, a Morning Consult poll revealed Monday.

Biden is polling at 40% overall among registered Democratic voters, more than double the second-place candidate, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is sitting at 19%.

But despite Sanders’s Jewish heritage, and increasing willingness to discuss his family history on the campaign trail, Biden’s lead over Sanders is even larger within the Jewish community than it is overall, with the former veep polling at 47%, compared to 11% for the democratic socialist.

The video announcing Biden’s candidacy heavily featured footage of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Biden described the marchers as “baring the fangs of racism, chanting the same anti-Semitism bile heard across Europe in the 1930s,” before criticizing President Trump for claiming there were “very fine people” among the marchers.

The rest of the candidates’ poll results are about the same among Jewish voters as they are overall, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg in third through fifth place, polling in the high single digits.

Biden is also winning big among Catholics and Protestants, while Sanders is the most popular candidate among atheists.

Morning Consult conducted 15,770 online interviews with registered voters between from April 29 and May 5, giving its poll a margin of error of 1%.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter at @aidenpink.

Aiden Pink is the Deputy News Editor for the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

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