That was more than the amount of coverage given to Hillary Clinton (eight minutes), Donald Trump (seven minutes) and Marco Rubio (five minutes).
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Hillary Clinton’s “firewall” in South Carolina’s February 27 primary is constructed of black voters, whom she’s banking on to head to the polls and save her from the insurgent Sen. This was an event years in the making, and held expectations from Democrats and Republicans alike: will Clinton continue her expected lead? Others cite his pledge to increase the minimum wage.
Although Sanders has so far earned more delegates from primary and caucus voters, Clinton’s total delegate count trounces his by a count of 394 to 44.
“It is clear to me when mom is out working, dad is out working and the kids are out working, wages in America are too damn low”, Sanders told 1,700 supporters packed into a Las Vegas high school gymnasium on Sunday.
In South Carolina, moreover, younger voters represented a smaller proportion of African-Americans and, while there are already signs Sanders will make inroads among them, Clinton is counting on solid majorities from middle-aged and older black voters.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll also showed that either Clinton or Sanders would win a hypothetical general election contest with Trump.
Indeed, along with the elected officials who are automatic “superdelegates”, African-Americans remain the closest thing that Clinton has to a firewall that will help her withstand the momentum Sanders gained in New Hampshire.
In a Public Policy Polling survey conducted among likely Democratic primary voters, 54 percent were black.
Sanders, meanwhile, holds the edge among white men (54 percent to 41 percent), independents (61 percent to 33 percent) and primary voters under the age of 50 (57 percent to 40 percent). If she loses in Nevada, she could still win in SC, but more questions would be asked about her chances of going all the way.
On the Democratic side, Iowa and New Hampshire told us is that Clinton, once the most formidable non-incumbent seeking the presidency in modern American history, was no longer that. There are 328,000 eligible Hispanic voters in Nevada-the 13th largest Hispanic statewide eligible voter population nationally.
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At a news conference later, Sharpton said Clinton was “candid and open”, but he added he had yet to decide who to support and that no candidate should take the support of black voters for granted. While no other poll of the race going back to 2014 has ever showed Clinton trailing a rival, she led Sanders by just 2 percentage points in the last two Quinnipiac University tracking polls.
