Biden to plug tech bill in California, campaign in Illinois
Updated 7:10 p.m.
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Joe Biden promised his supporters not to leave them behind as he visited a key primary state Tuesday.
Voters in California, where Biden is seeking a second term in the White House, gave him a comfortable lead with a voter turnout of 50.4 percent. Nearly 8 in 10 voted for him.
It’s a big leap for him over President Trump’s 46.6 percent, according to the California polling firm Field Poll.
In Illinois, voters favored Trump’s reelection by a margin of 53.9 to 44.2 percent, a drop of 3.4 percentage points, according to the Field Poll.
Tuesday’s election — the first primary contest since a Supreme Court order in April to stop the Democratic Party from backing its presidential nominee — is being held as part of the traditional presidential primary season. That time is typically associated with low-turnout elections, which the Field Poll noted in its report on the California vote.
The polling firm said turnout in its poll of California voters, which was conducted between Aug. 29 and Sept. 2, is at its highest level for a primary since the last presidential primary in 2012. Since then, voter turnout in California has been on the rise, reaching its highest level in both the primary and general election since 1990, the pollster said.
The California vote has typically been a reliably high-turnout election, with nearly 87 percent of ballots counted, according to a Field Poll report from 2014.
This year, the voting was particularly crowded and voters came out in droves, said Field Poll President Glen Bolger.
“I think what we are seeing is there is a lot of enthusiasm about the campaign,” Bolger said. “For the most part, those are the people that make up the electorate. They turned out in huge numbers.”
The Field Poll found the gap between the presidential and Senate candidates narrowed. Biden leads Trump in the general election by a margin of more than 9 percentage points, with about 43 percent support to Trump’s 44 percent. There’s still a
