The survey, commissioned by IPFW’s Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics, found that while 93 percent of Clinton’s supporters said their preference for the former secretary of state is strong, only 75 percent of Sanders’ backers said the same thing about the Vermont senator.

The relative lack of strong support for Sanders, who typically draws large crowds to his campaign rallies, is “a little bit surprising” and “opposite of what conventional wisdom would be,” IPFW political scientist Michael Wolf said Wednesday.

Wolf said the most frequent answer to the question of why a respondent favors Sanders was “not sure,” and the next most common response was a negative opinion of Clinton. Clinton’s supporters most often cited her experience and qualifications.

Wolf and Downs Center director Andy Downs presented preliminary poll results at a panel discussion at the Honors Center in the Walter E. Helmke Library. They said the telephone survey of 400 likely voters, nearly all of them Democrats, was conducted April 18-23 and has a 4.9 percent margin of error.