Since Wednesday, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will focus on African American voters, who appear to prefer the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, days before the primary elections will take place in Washington, Nevada and South Carolina.
Analysts have described Sanders as a “relevant” Democratic candidate, since he almost won the Iowa caucuses and finished 20 points ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire. However, the former secretary of state is still leading the race, according to polls.
Democratic primary voters in South Carolina will consider Sen. Bernie Sanders as a “viable candidate” and they will take him into account since he has demonstrated a good performance in the caucuses of the last two weeks, said political science professor Robert Oldendick from University of South Carolina to USA Today.
However, Hillary Clinton is still leading the Democratic race, since apparently 74 percent of African American likely voters support her, according to poll analysts from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.
Most Latinos, who are determinant to define who will win the Nevada caucuses, also prefer Clinton to Sanders, according to polls. Todd Rutherford, a South Carolina House minority leader, said that Clinton has a sense of comprehension of what are the issues that concern African Americans, “unlike Sanders” who is new at facing problems of the minorities, he added, according to USA Today. However Sen. Sander is no that new to that kind of issues since he has been involved in the civil right movement for more than 40 years.
Sanders has proposed that he will face poverty and “institutional racism” among African Americans, as part of his plans to attract voters from the South. Moreover, he remarked that he took part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom when he was a college student.
“The reason we’ll do well is our views on criminal justice in this country. We have a broken criminal justice system. Why should we in America have more people in jail, largely African American and Latino, than any country on Earth?” Sanders, who finished just 0.3 points behind Clinton in Iowa, said Wednesday on The View.
The Vermont candidate for the Democratic nomination also started a campaign in November in Spanish-language radios in Nevada, and African American radios in South Carolina, saying that institutional racism must end and that the criminal justice system needs to be improved.
On Wednesday, Sanders and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is a civil rights activist and president of the National Action Network, ate together at a restaurant in Harlem, New York City. Mr. Obama did the same in 2007 while he was on campaign, said U.S.A. Today.
Source: USA Today