Pete Buttigieg would beat Trump in a presidential election, says new poll
Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg. (Paras Griffin/WireImage)
Openly gay Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg would beat Donald Trump in a general election, according to new polling.
Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, would win a general election against President Trump by nine points, the Quinnipiac poll shows.
If the 2020 presidential election were held today and it was between Trump and Buttigieg, 49 per cent of registered voters would opt for Buttigieg while only 40 per cent would vote for Trump.
Trump trails five Democratic candidates in the new poll – and falls double digits behind former vice president Joe Biden and senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.
new Quinnipiac Poll shows all leading Democratic candidates comfortably ahead of Trump:
Biden +16 (54%-38%)
Sanders +14
Warren +12
Harris +11
Buttigieg +9
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 28, 2019
However, the polling also shows that Buttigieg would come last in a Democratic primary against Biden, Warren, Sanders and Harris.
Pete Buttigieg is dividing lesbian political activists
Buttigieg, 37, has attracted widespread LGBT+ support in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
But lesbian political activists in the US are divided over whether they want Buttigieg for president or whether they want a woman, according to Politico.
Interviews with prominent LGBT+ Democrats have shown that there is a “collision of goals and ideals in the community of lesbian political activists this year”, Politico reports.
“Mayor Pete, he’s a trailblazer,” said Campbell Spencer, a lesbian and political consultant who worked in the Obama White House and sits on the board of the LGBTQ Victory Fund – which this year endorsed Buttigieg to be president, it’s first-ever endorsement of a presidential candidate.
“But I’m one of these women who thinks we are way overdue for having a woman in the White House. That’s a lens through which I’m going to filter my decision,” Spencer added.
LGBT+ voters make up around six per cent of the US electorate, according to 2018 midterm election exit polls.
