(Bloomberg) -- Bernie Sanders again denied telling Elizabeth Warren that a woman can’t be elected president, but said he believes gender is among a range of issues that can affect a candidate’s chances.

“It is hard for me to imagine how anybody in the year 2020 would not believe that a woman could become the president of the United States,” Sanders said Sunday on New Hampshire Public Radio after saying he didn’t want to get into “a private conversation” from 2018.

Sanders said that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the popular vote against Donald Trump in 2016, and said “the media has blown” up his alleged comments to Warren in a private conversation about their political ambitions. He has denied saying a woman couldn’t be elected in 2020, but Warren has insisted he did.

The Vermont senator said that a generation ago, most people would have said it was doubtful an African American could be elected president, as Barack Obama was in 2008 and 2012. Sanders said his and Buttigieg’s ages, 78 and 38 respectively, and Buttigieg’s sexual orientation could also be factors for some voters.

“Everybody has their own sets of problems,” Sanders said. Voters have to “look at the totality of a candidate, not at their gender, not at their sexuality, not at their age, but at everything. Nobody is perfect,” he said.

COMING UP:

Top-tier Democratic presidential candidates will be in Columbia, South Carolina, on Monday for events to mark the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday

The candidates will debate again in New Hampshire on Feb. 7.

The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses will be held Feb. 3. The New Hampshire primary is Feb. 11. Nevada holds its caucuses on Feb. 22 and South Carolina has a primary on Feb. 29.

(Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Emma Kinery in Washington at ekinery@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.