This article is more than 8 months old

This article is more than 8 months old

Joe Biden received some good news ahead of what promises to be a challenging Iowa caucus: a poll released on Saturday that shows him the overwhelming favourite for the Democratic presidential nomination among black Americans.

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The former vice-president and senator from Delaware leads nationally but has seen his advantage in Iowa dwindle, with some polls regarding the first formal election-year test placing his closest national rival, Bernie Sanders, at the head of the field.

Nationally, however, a new Washington Post/IPSO poll gives Biden a seemingly unassailable lead with black voters, 48% to 20% for Sanders.

No other candidate, including Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren (9%), former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey senator Cory Booker (both 4%), returned better than single-digit support.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana who has performed strongly in Iowa and New Hampshire, the second state to vote, attracted just 2% support.

“I think neither Warren nor Sanders and certainly not Pete Buttigieg have ever had a breakthrough with African American voters sufficient to eliminate Biden’s advantage,” Republican strategist Rick Wilson told the Guardian in an interview conducted before the Post poll was published.

“And also, Biden’s got the secret weapon. If Barack Obama is free to get out there [for him] and do the campaigning that only he can do in American political life, I think that would be a meaningful lift.”

The poll showed that Sanders was most popular with black voters under 35, with 42% to Biden’s 30%, mirroring the Vermont senator’s standing with young white voters in other recent nationwide polling.

But Biden regains a sharp advantage in the 35-to-49 age group (41%-16%), and among voters older than 65 there is no contest: Biden enjoys 68% popularity, with second-placed Sanders floundering at 8%.

The poll, of Democrat-leaning registered voters was conducted between 2 and 8 January, and according to the Post “illuminates the contours of Biden’s support among different subsets of the black electorate”.

His popularity endures, the article states, “despite questions about his age [Biden will be 78 a little more than two weeks after election day on 3 November], his past positions on forced school bussing and his relationships with southern segregationist senators”.

In Iowa, which will vote on 3 February, Biden has slipped to a virtual tie with Sanders, according to modelling by the FiveThirtyEight website. A Des Moines Register/CNN poll had Sanders edging ahead.

The national poll of black voters therefore offers a timely boost to Biden’s campaign.

“No candidate will win the Democratic presidential nomination without significant support from African Americans,” wrote Post columnist Jonathan Capehart in his analysis of the poll.

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“They are the foundation of the party, and black women are its backbone. And the poll, like many national polls before it, makes it clear that they want Trump defeated and they think former vice-president Joe Biden is the person to do it.”

Booker, a New Jersey senator who is African American, has not qualified for Tuesday’s Democratic debate in Des Moines. But he did attract more support in the Post poll than Buttigieg.

The Post noted that the former mayor, 37, “is among the leaders in polls in the predominantly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire but … a lack of familiarity with him and concerns about his experience and sexual orientation appear to be contributing to his current standing” with black voters.

Buttigieg, the Post added, “has said that as African Americans get to know him, he will gain more support, but the poll undercuts that assertion.”