One day before South Carolina, Joe Biden is being buoyed by two pieces of good news from Super Tuesday state Virginia: an influential endorsement and stronger polling numbers.
In a poll released Friday by the Wason Center, Biden, 77, leads the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential primary field in Virginia with 22% of the vote, ahead of Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg, with 17% and 13% support, respectively.
The center, housed at Christopher Newport University, also found Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren were attracting 8% of the vote, while Amy Klobuchar has 5%. Tom Steyer is registering 1% support.
Virginia is one of 14 states and entities that will weigh in on the 2020 Democratic race for the White House on March 3. Although it doesn’t offer candidates the sheer number of delegates available in California and Texas, it still provides them with the opportunity to pick up some of its 99 pledged delegates and the bragging rights attached to any evidence they can appeal to voters in an important general election battleground.
If polls are accurate, Biden is tracking toward a win in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, his first victory of the cycle’s early nominating contests. But Delaware’s 36-year senator also has to perform well on Super Tuesday to keep any hope of becoming his party’s next standard-bearer alive, particularly as Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and Biden’s rival for the center-left lane, officially enters the race.
Friday’s poll coincides with Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee, announcing his endorsement of Biden, a show of confidence after earlier public opinion research put Sanders, the socialist Vermont senator, in front of the pack.
Sanders, the 2020 Democratic front-runner, averages 25% of the vote in Virginia to Bloomberg’s 19.5% and Biden’s 18.5%, according to RealClearPolitics data.
The Wason Center poll was conducted among 561 likely Democratic voters via cellphones and landlines between Feb. 3 and Feb. 24. Its findings have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
