Joe Biden Crushes Bernie Sanders, Leads Elizabeth Warren in 6 Latest Polls
A recent poll showing former Vice President Joe Biden trailing Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic presidential nomination appears to have been an outlier, if the six most recent national Democratic primary polls are any indication. Biden has double-digit leads in most of them, and significant leads in all.
Earlier this week, a Monmouth University poll that showed Warren and Sanders at 20 percent nationally — one point ahead of Biden at 19 percent — got a lot of attention, and left people wondering if a Biden slide was imminent. As we noted yesterday, it wasn’t just the one poll; an Economist/YouGov poll taken one day after the Monmouth and completed the same day has Biden at 22 percent, Sanders within the margin of error at 19, and Warren at 17.
But since then, six more national polls have come out, and they all show Biden with especially commanding leads against Sanders, and convincing leads against Warren, although the Massachusetts senator is hanging in there.
An Economist/YouGov poll taken 8/24 – 8/27 has Biden at 25 percent, Sanders at 14, and Warren at 21 percent. That’s a five-point drop for Sanders, but a three-point bump for Biden and Warren in the space of a week.
The Emerson poll from 8/24 – 8/26 has Biden at 31, Sanders at 24, and Warren at 15. Sanders has lost 4 points in that poll since late July, while Biden and Warren are within a point or two of their July results.
The Hill/HarrisX poll from 8/23 – 8/24 has Biden at 30, Sanders at 17, and Warren at 14. Since their last poll two weeks ago, Biden and Sanders have held about steady but Warren picked up 4 points.
A USA Today/Suffolk taken 8/20 – 8/25 shows Biden at 32 percent, Sanders at 12, and Warren at 14. Their last poll was in June, when the results were 30 percent for Biden, 15 for Sanders, and 10 for Warren.
The most recent Politico/Morning Consult poll taken 8/19 – 8/25 has Biden at 33 percent, Sanders at 20, and Warren at 15. That’s a gain of two points for Biden since last week, and no change for Warren and Sanders.
Quinnipiac’s 8/21 – 8/26 poll has Biden at 32 percent, Sanders at 15, and Warren at 19, essentially unchanged from a few weeks ago. But among black voters, an important Democratic constituency, Biden destroys all other candidates at 46 percent, and Sanders has dropped six points — to 10 percent — with that group since the beginning of the month, while Warren has picked up a couple of points to tie him at 10.
Biden, Warren, and Sanders performed similarly with black voters in two of the other polls, with Biden at 38 percent and the other two at ten percent or below.
And if there were any further doubt about that Monmouth poll, the company put out a statement Wednesday saying that “it is clear that the Monmouth University Poll published Monday is an outlier.”
None of this is likely to overjoy supporters or campaigns that aren’t Joe Biden’s, but there’s some good news in there for Warren, who gained in most of these polls.
But good information is always better than bad. The current state of play will help candidates formulate strategy for the next debate. If the current field holds, it will be the first time that all of the top-tier candidates will share the debate stage, and the stakes could not be higher.
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[Featured photos L: (Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty) R: (Scott Olson/Getty Images)]
