Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has routinely compared poor whites in Vermont to US slaves and Africans living under apartheid, according to reports.

Sanders, who is leading the pack of front-runners ahead of Monday’s Iowa caucus, routinely suggested in the 1970s and ’80s that poor workers in his home state were slaves and compared their plight to slavery, according to past interviews unearthed and reviewed by Politico and The Daily Beast.

In 1976, Sanders told a local newspaper that the sale of a privately owned company was reminiscent of “the days of slavery, when black people were sold to different owners without their consent,” adding that the service economy was comparable to chattel slavery, according to The Daily Beast.

That same year, the 2020 hopeful also suggested that workers were slaves if they didn’t own the companies they worked for, Politico reported, citing local newspaper the Brattleboro Reformer.

“What about the 800 workers? They were informed about the sale four days before it was publicly announced. They were sold to the Swiss. No one asked them how they felt about it. They weren’t treated very differently from the way black people in this country were treated when there was slavery,” the Democratic socialist said.

“Basically, today, Vermont workers remain slaves in many, many ways,” Sanders said in a 1977 interview in which he compared the state’s growing service industry to enslavement. “The problem comes when we end up with an entire state of people trained to wait on other people.”

One year later, Sanders once again described the plight of workers worldwide to slavery, telling the Rutland Daily Herald, “I believe that the vast majority of the people of the world and of this country are living in a slave-like condition not terribly different from what existed in this country before the Civil War.”

While serving as mayor of Burlington, Sanders was called out during a 1986 public forum for saying that poor Vermonters “are the equivalent of blacks in South Africa. They don’t vote, they aren’t involved, they don’t care about the issues.”

One observer on stage with the then-mayor of the state’s largest city commented on his use of “pretty fiery oratory,” leading Sanders to push back slightly.

“Obviously the analogy is not true, because in South Africa the blacks are not invisible — they are beginning to stand up,” he responded.

The Democratic front-runner’s comments come after his 2020 rival Joe Biden spent months defending his own past statements and policies on race.

The former vice president has been forced to defend his prior opposition to busing by the Department of Education to desegregate public schools and his recent comments on being able to work with well-known segregationists during his time in Congress.

A spokesman for Sanders’ campaign did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on his unearthed remarks.

“We expect to see these desperate last-minute attacks continue as long as this movement thrives, but Americans trust Bernie Sanders, and they can identify a cynical, politically motivated ploy when they see one,” Sanders campaign national press secretary Briahna Joy Gray said in a statement to Politico.

Gray also told the outlet that Sanders has “a long record of commitment to racial equality,” and that the campaign has seen rising support from black voters.