Sen. Elizabeth Warren widened her significant lead in the 2020 presidential field among 5C students surveyed by TSL in its most recent presidential opinion poll.
Nearly 57 percent of the 95 students polled through an emailed online form in mid-September said the Massachusetts lawmaker was their preferred choice for the Democratic nomination for president, up from 51 percent among that same group who responded to an earlier TSL poll conducted in late August and early September.
Warren’s success at the 5Cs comes amid a surge in her national poll numbers. In a new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, Warren claimed first place in the Democratic field with 27 percent of respondents, beating out the usual frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, who took 25 percent.
In the most recent TSL poll, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., came in second place with 17 percent of the vote, up from 15 percent support among that same group in the earlier poll. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, finished third with 11 percent, down from 13 percent in the earlier poll.
Support for Biden, who’s currently leading the field in most national polls, took a dive among 5C students, from 4 percent to just 1 percent. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., also dropped, from 5 to 3 percent. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang remained steady at 5 percent in both polls.
No other candidate averaged more than 2 percent support in either poll.
No respondents selected the candidates with Claremont connections: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock CM ’88 or spiritual leader Marianne Williamson — who attended Pomona for two years. Each had the support of 1 percent of respondents in TSL’s previous poll. Neither met the Democratic National Committee’s qualifications for the third debate.
TSL’s most recent poll was conducted after the third Democratic debate in Houston on Sept. 12. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they watched either all or part of that debate. Eighty-three percent of respondents who changed their minds between the first and second poll said they watched the third debate.
Kellen Browning PO ’20 is a politics major from Davis, California. He’s currently TSL’s editor-at-large and previously served as the paper’s editor-in-chief, managing editor and news editor.