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66% of Democratic voters said it’s important the 2020 Democratic candidate has decades of political experience, along with 52% who are looking for an insider.
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Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders are viewed as closest to the establishment, while Democrats see lesser-known candidates as outsiders.
Democrats are already boasting a diverse crop of candidates for the party’s presidential nomination, including a gay millennial veteran with no prior national political experience, two African-Americans and five high-profile women.
But more than any of that, Democratic voters are prioritizing experience when thinking about their nominee to challenge President Donald Trump next year, according a new Morning Consult/Politico poll.
Two-thirds of Democrats surveyed March 15-17 said it’s important that the party’s eventual nominee has decades of political experience under his or her belt. And while Trump stormed the gates of the GOP during the 2016 presidential primary riding his outsider status to victory, Democrats are putting a premium on proximity to the establishment.
Fifty-two percent of the party’s voters said it’s important that the Democratic presidential nominee be a political insider, compared with 29 percent who preferred an outside operator.
So who do Democrats perceive as representing the party’s political establishment?
The poll asked voters to rank a list of current and possible 2020 Democratic candidates on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a political insider and 10 meaning they’re a political outsider.
Turns out, it’s most of them: Democratic voters put 10 of the 17 names…
