2016 Poll: Bernie Sanders Wins More Favor with Iowa Dems

There’s been a surge of support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) among likely Iowa Democratic caucus attendees, according to a new poll of Iowa Democratic voters.

The Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll released Monday found that 16 percent of Iowa Democratic caucus-attendees say Sanders would be their first choice, up from 5 percent in January. By contrast, 57 percent of Iowa Democratic Iowa caucus-attendees said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) would be their first choice and just 2 percent picked former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D).

The finding for Clinton is virtually unchanged from January when the poll said 56 percent say Clinton is their first choice. The January poll found that 1 percent of Iowa Democrats picked O’Malley, who formally jumped into the 2016 race over the weekend.

Sanders’ favorability is up, too. The poll found that 47 percent of those surveyed of Iowa Democrats view him favorably while 12 percent view him unfavorably. In January 37 percent said they had a favorable view of Sanders while 12 percent said they had an unfavorable view of him.

Sanders is hoping that to be a liberal alternative to Clinton in the Democratic field in the way supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) hoped she would if she decided to run for president (Warren has said multiple times she would not run).

Warren’s favorables are better than both Sanders though. Sixty-two percent said they had a favorable view of Warren while 9 percent said they had an unfavorable view. That’s still not as good as Clinton though, where 86 percent of Iowa Democrats said they had a favorable view of her while 12 percent said they had an unfavorable view, slightly up from January.

The poll was conducted among 4,161 Iowans with a subset of 437 likely Democratic caucus-goers. The margin of error for Democrats was plus or minus 4.7 percent.