Sanders looking to knock out Warren on her home turf

Bloomberg

Bernie Sanders is looking to deliver a knock-out blow to his progressive competitor Elizabeth Warren on Super Tuesday by winning the primary on her home turf of Massachusetts.
Sanders, the national front-runner, is making an aggressive push in the Bay State in the last few days before the March 3 Democratic ballot.
He held a rally there last week as polls show him overtaking Warren.
For her part, Warren will return home on Tuesday to vote but has no planned campaign events in the state, and that night she’ll be in Michigan.
Sanders and Warren are rivals for the progressive mantle in the Democratic race but have largely avoided attacking each other during the campaign, and have declared themselves “friends.” They’ve clashed recently as Sanders has taken the lead in polls while Warren’s efforts have faltered.
During the candidates’ debate in South Carolina on Tuesday, Warren declared that she “would make a better president than Bernie,” citing examples of her record.
Massachusetts is far from the biggest prize among the 14 states that vote on March 3, with 114 delegates at stake compared with 494 for California. But for Warren, who hasn’t come close to winning a primary, rejection by the voters who know her best could intensify pressure to drop out.
“If she loses Massachusetts,
I don’t know how she continues on,” said Scott Ferson, a Democratic strategist based in the state who isn’t backing a candidate.
A poll by Suffolk University, the Boston Globe and WBZ-TV showed Sanders and Warren in a statistical tie in Massachusetts with 24% and 22%, respectively. Michael Bloomberg had 13%, Pete Buttigieg was at 12% and Joe Biden at 11%, all within the margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
But a poll by WBUR showed Sanders in the lead with 25%, followed by Warren with 17%, Buttigieg with 14% and Bloomberg with 13%. Biden trailed with 9%.
Warren has high favourability among Democratic voters in the state she’s represented in the Senate since 2012. She won election to a second six-year term in 2018 by a wide margin. But her poor performances in the first three nominating contests have led voters to question whether she’d be the best Democrat to defeat Donald Trump in November.
“Warren is popular in Massachusetts and people have a high opinion of her, but I think people view this differently,” Ferson said. “Usually who’s got the best chance of winning [the general election] isn’t part of people’s calculus for voting. I think it is this year, particularly in Massachusetts.”
Warren has played down her need to win Massachusetts, Columbia, South Carolina, and when pressed at the debate of presidential candidates in South Carolina on Tuesday.
“Look, I’m out here making my case to everybody all across the nation and I’m so deeply grateful to the people in my home state who helped me beat an incumbent Republican back in 2012,” Warren said, referring to her victory over Scott Brown.