U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders leads the Maryland Democratic primary race for president, a new poll from Goucher College shows.
In a survey conducted Feb. 13-19, 24% of respondents said they plan to vote for Sanders in the state’s April 28 primary. Former Vice President Joe Biden was in second place with 18% support, followed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg with 16%.
About 7% of respondents said they planned to vote for former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, while U.S. senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts each had 6% support.
Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, is leading an average of national polls by double digits.
Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center at Goucher, noted the last time the poll surveyed voters about the race, in September, Biden was the front-runner.
“There’s been significant change in the preferences of Maryland Democratic likely voters since the September 2019 Goucher College Poll," Kromer said. “Reflecting national polls, Sanders has gained ground, while both Biden and Warren have lost support in Maryland.”
The Goucher poll asked about head-to-head matchups between individual Democrats and Republican President Donald Trump. In deep-blue Maryland, the poll found every Democrat in the field leading Trump by wide margins. But Sanders led Trump by the biggest margin, 61% to 34%, according to the poll.
Just 31% of Marylanders approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 62% disapprove, the poll found. Those numbers are better, however, than the approval of Congress. Only 13% of residents approve of the job Congress is doing, compared with 79% who disapprove.
The Goucher College Poll surveyed 929 people to identify 718 Maryland likely voters, and 371 likely Democratic voters. The overall margin of error is 3.6 percentage points, and 5.1 percentage points for the Democratic primary portion of the poll.
Maryland has more than 100 delegates in the race for the Democratic nomination for president, most of which are allocated proportionally based on the outcome of the primary.