Hillary and Sanders

A majority of Democrats now say that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders should stay in the presidential race despite Hillary Clinton’s wide delegate lead over him, said a new national poll on Tuesday.

According to the NBC News/Survey Monkey poll, 57 percent of Democrats said that Sanders should stay in the race through the Democratic convention scheduled for late July.

Only one in four Democrats said Sanders should end his candidacy after the final primary contest in June if he still runs behind Clinton, and only 16 percent think he should withdraw from the race now.

While an overwhelming majority of Sanders’ supporters want their candidate to stay in the race through the Democratic convention in July, opinions were divided among Clinton’s supporters.

Though Clinton’s campaign was expecting Sanders to exit soon, twenty-eight percent of Clinton’s supporters agreed that Sanders should stay in the race through the whole nomination process, and 40 percent would like to see him dropping out of the race after the final primary contest in June. Only 30 percent would like to see him bow out now.

The poll came one week after Clinton trounced Sanders with a sweeping victory in four of the five primaries in East Coast. So far, Clinton had won 1,663 pledged delegates, compared with Sanders’ 1,367 pledged delegates, according to the latest delegate count by The New York Times.

Despite the uphill battle to surpass Clinton in delegate count, Sanders had made clear that he would not exit the race before California votes on June 7.

• Xinhua/NAN