Hillary Clinton has opened wide leads among Democrats in the early voting states of Nevada and South Carolina.
Fifty percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Nevada support the former secretary of state, two new CNN/ORC International polls found. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders follows Clinton with 34 percent, followed by Vice President Joe Biden at 12 percent.
The rest of the field, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, Harvard professor Larry Lessig, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, all garner less than 1 percent of support.
The Democratic presidential candidates are set to meet in their party’s first debate of 2016 on Tuesday in Las Vegas. Nevada’s caucus is scheduled for Feb. 20, and it’s the third state to elect delegates after Iowa and New Hampshire.
In South Carolina, which holds its primary the week after Nevada’s, Clinton again has the support of about half of all Democrats polled, at 49 percent. But her lead in that state is larger, as Sanders follows with 24 percent. Biden does a bit better in South Carolina, with 18 percent, and O’Malley has 3 percent.
Should Biden sit out the 2016 race, the poll finds Clinton’s lead over Sanders grows in both states.
The polls of 253 likely Democratic primary voters in Nevada and 301 likely Democratic primary voters in South Carolina were conducted Oct. 3-10 and have margins of error of plus or minus 6 and 5.5 points, respectively.
