Poll: Buttigieg has 0 percent support among South Carolina black voters

A new South Carolina poll shows South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) with zero percent support among likely primary voters who are African American, a crucial Democratic voting bloc in the early primary state.

The Post and Courier-Change Research Poll, released Sunday, shows former Vice President Joe Biden with a comfortable lead among black voters with 58 percent, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in second place with 15 percent and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) in third place with 12 percent. Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who has not announced a run, polls ahead of Buttigieg with 2 percent among black Palmetto State Democrats, who comprise 61 percent of Democratic voters in the state.

{mosads}Despite his rapid rise in the crowded Democratic primary field, Buttigieg recently came under scrutiny over the revelation that he had used the phrase “all lives matter” during a controversy involving the South Bend Police Department. Activists have said the phrase minimizes hardships faced specifically by African Americans.

Buttigieg fares better among white voters in the state, where the poll puts his support at 18 percent to Biden’s 38 percent, and among Democratic voters as a whole, where he comes in fourth with eight percent. Biden has a commanding lead in the state as a whole and with its black voters, leading the field with 46 percent to Sanders’s 15 percent and Harris’s 10 percent. While Biden has led most polling and in many surveys has seen a polling bump since his formal campaign announcement April 25, pollsters said the former vice president’s post-announcement bump was higher in South Carolina than in other areas of the country, according to the newspaper.

“He’s always been popular in South Carolina and always maintained good relationships here, so people were really excited about him getting in,” Kenneth Glover, chairman of the Orangeburg County Democratic Party, told The Post and Courier.

The poll was conducted among 595 likely Democratic primary voters from May 6 to May 9, and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points, according to the newspaper.