Though he has yet to officially announce his candidacy for his party’s 2020 White House nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden has been viewed from the start as the top choice to earn the Democratic Party’s nomination to take on President Donald Trump — at least, until now.
A new national poll revealed that Biden has lost his lead over the pack to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, just days before the former VP is expected to officially declare his candidacy.
Sanders tops Biden in a new poll
A mid-April Emerson College poll of likely Democratic primary voters found that support for Sanders has jumped to 29%, with Biden trailing behind at 24%. Pollsters asked respondents to choose from a list of 20 candidates, or they could choose a general response of “someone else.”
Third place in the poll was held by the surging South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who had the support of 9% of respondents. Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and California Sen. Kamala Harris were tied for fourth place with 8%. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren followed with 7% support.
This is the first major poll in which Sanders has supplanted Biden for the lead. Steve Kimball, director of Emerson polling, attributed this switch to falling support for the former vice president, whose “handsy” tendencies have reportedly even made his wife uncomfortable at times, and whose past support for tough criminal penalties has earned him criticism from the left.
“Biden has seen his support drop,” Kimball said. “In February, he led Sanders 27% to 17%, and in March the two were tied at 26%. Now, Sanders has a 5 point lead, 29% to 24%.”
Should Biden decide to avoid the muck and forgo a run for the presidency in the 2020 cycle, Emerson predicted that Sanders would pick up nearly a third of Biden’s supporters, while Buttigieg would likely win over 17%. They had 13% of Biden supporters jumping to O’Rourke, while the rest of the Democrat 2020 hopefuls divvied up the rest.
In analyzing the poll’s results, Kimball also took special note of the surge in Buttigieg’s popularity. The former Indiana mayor seems to have captured the hearts of the media away from their prior political crush, O’Rourke.
“While still early in the nominating process, it looks like Mayor Pete is the candidate capturing voters’ imagination,” Kimball said. “The numbers had him at 0% in mid-February, 3% in March and now at 9% in April.”
Biden beats Trump in a hypothetical match-up
The top priority among Democrats ahead of 2020 is defeating President Trump — and Emerson’s polling showed that Biden has the best chance among the lot to actually do so. He beat Trump in a hypothetical match-up with 53% of the vote to Trump’s 47%.
Sanders and O’Rourke also beat Trump in hypothetical match-ups — 51% to 49%, and 51% to 48%, respectively — while Harris tied the current president. No other Democratic candidate was able to top or even match the president in a theoretical face-off.
Emerson’s poll results also found that Trump has been holding fairly steady among the American people in terms of his approval rating, which has remained at 43 percent for the past several months. Meanwhile, the president has seen a marginal improvement in disapproval rating; it dropped from 52% in January to 49% in April.
Looking forward
While this poll from Emerson could be a sign that Biden’s run for the Democrats’ nomination is already over before it has even formally started, in the end, it is just one poll — and it doesn’t align with other polls of the Democratic candidates’ current standing. The Real Clear Politics (RCP) average of polls, which includes Emerson along with numerous other major polls, still placed Biden ahead of Sanders by 7.5% among likely Democratic primary voters.
The RCP average showed Biden has drawn 30% of voters’ support in polls, while Sanders has earned the support of 22.5%. O’Rourke was third, with an average of 8.8% support, followed by Harris in fourth with 8.5%. Buttigieg and Warren tied for fifth with 6% support.
Joe Biden may have once been the clear favorite going into 2020, but that alleged lead has collapsed, according to this poll. The nominally centrist former vice president has been surpassed by a self-proclaimed socialist senator from Vermont.
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