Former Vice President Joe Biden has long been the clear and undisputed front-runner among the field of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, and though he suffered a dramatic reduction in his lead following the first Democratic debates, he has nevertheless clung to first place overall.
One of the candidates responsible for Biden’s previous drop is California Sen. Kamala Harris, and while she has enjoyed a surge of voter support, she still lags behind Biden by a significant margin in several southern states that will be crucial to the success of any candidate seeking the nomination.
New poll numbers
NBC News and SurveyMonkey recently teamed up to conduct polls in a number of states during the first two weeks of July, including the southern states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
All of those states have large populations of black voters that form a significant portion of the Democratic Party’s electorate in the region. While the running assumption in the media is that those voters would naturally align with Harris, Biden — who repeatedly and routinely reminds everyone of his close association with former President Barack Obama — remains the clear preference among black voters thus far.
Indeed, Biden was the overall leader among the field of Democratic candidates in the four southern states included in the recent polls.
Biden still strong
In Alabama, Biden had the support of 36% of voters, while Harris trailed far behind in third place with 13% support, just a few points behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who polled in second with 15% support.
In Georgia, Biden was the top candidate with 31% support, more than twice that of Harris who came in second with the support of 15% of surveyed voters.
Biden enjoys a significant lead in Mississippi with an astonishing 47% support among voters. Harris polled a very distant third place in the state with only 8% support among poll participants.
As for Tennessee, Biden emerged as the favorite with the support of 33% of respondents, while Harris came in fourth place with 12% support.
Predictive history
These poll results were indeed encouraging news for Biden’s campaign, as no Democratic candidate since 1988 who won a majority of support in the southern states failed to also win the party’s nomination.
That means that, conversely, the polling is bad news for Harris, who has apparently failed to make the necessary inroads into the black community of voters in the southern states who are vital to the success of any Democrat’s ambitions.
The ominous results for Harris in these polls mirrors national polling on the Democratic primary race as well, and while the California senator has arguably established herself firmly among the top-tier of the field of nearly two dozen candidates, she still trails well behind Biden.
The RealClearPolitics average of polls currently lists Biden as the clear front-runner with 28.4% support, more than 13 points ahead of his closest competitor, Sanders, who has an even 15% support in the average.
Harris, meanwhile, is ranked in fourth place nationally with an average of 12.6% support among voters taking part in the various polls.
To be sure, there is still a long way to go even before the early primary states begin to cast their votes, much less for the Democratic Party to hold its convention to choose its nominee to do battle with President Donald Trump.
There will be a number of debates between now and then, and who knows what sort of unflattering opposition research or damaging scandal might emerge in the media during that stretch that could bolster and/or destroy the candidacies of Biden or Harris or any of the other contenders.
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