Strong Majority of Democratic Voters Agree: Sanders Should Fight to the End

A full 89 percent of Sanders supporters say they would like to see him stay in the race until July. (Photo: Todd Church/flickr/cc)

Strong Majority of Democratic Voters Agree: Sanders Should Fight to the End

'We intend to fight for every vote in front of us,' Sanders said

The majority of left-leaning voters want Bernie Sanders to stay in the presidential race, a new poll reveals.

Just as the Vermont senator is promising to take his candidacy all the way to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in July--and contest the delegate allocation if necessary--voters around the country are expressing just how much they believe in him and what his candidacy represents.

A full 89 percent of Sanders supporters say they would like to see him stay in the race until July, with 57 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters agreeing, according to the NBC News/SurveyMonkey survey released Tuesday.

The poll also finds a "sizeable" 28 percent of rival Hillary Clinton's base wanting the same.

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Meanwhile, only 25 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters think he should drop out after the final primary in June if he is still behind.

Clinton currently leads Sanders by about 300 pledged delegates, with over 1,000 still available.

The poll comes as Indiana voters prepare to cast their ballots in Tuesday's primary. Sanders held a rally in downtown Indianapolis on Monday during which he told the crowd, "As of today, in what I call earned delegates, the delegates that you earn after a primary or a caucus, we have won about 45 percent of them. There are 10 states left and we have to earn over 50 percent of those delegates and that's what the importance of Indiana is. And we are going to fight as hard as we can for every vote."

On Sunday, Sanders said he would continue pushing superdelegates to switch their allegiance to his campaign, telling an interviewer, "We intend to fight for every vote in front of us and for every delegate remaining."

The poll of 12,462 registered voters was conducted online April 25 to May 1, 2016, with an error margin of +/- 1.2 percentage points.

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