Former Vice President Joe Biden has a double-digit advantage over Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the latest poll of Michigan taken just before the state's primary, Fox News reports.
Monmouth University found Biden leads Sanders among likely Democratic voters 51% to 36% in Michigan, in a poll conducted from last Thursday though Sunday. In the recent Super Tuesday primaries, Biden ended up with a 90-delegate advantage over Sanders, winning 10 of the 14 states that voted on that day.
Michigan has 125 pledged delegates, making it the top state of the six that hold primaries this Tuesday: Missouri, Mississippi, Washington, Idaho, and North Dakota.
White voters back Biden over Sanders by 14% and non-white voters prefer Biden by 17%. Biden holds a 38-point advantage among voters over the age of 50, but Sanders has an 11-point lead among voters under 50. Female voters prefer Biden by 20 points, while Sanders holds a 10-point lead among male voters.
"Biden appears to have the advantage because he is doing well among some groups that Sanders won four years ago, but as we learned in 2016, Michigan can defy expectations," Patrick Murray, the director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement.
"The 2016 Michigan Democratic primary is considered to be the biggest polling miss of that cycle. Polls released in the week before the state primary showed Hillary Clinton with anywhere from a 10 to 27 point lead – Monmouth's poll had her up by 13 points – but Sanders ended up winning the contest by just over a percentage point," he added.
Monmouth polled 411 likely Democratic presidential primary voters in Michigan from March 5-8 by phone, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.