Latest Poll Shows Biden Facing His Biggest Deficit Yet as Warren's Momentum Swells
Former Vice President Joe Biden seems to have lost the lead in the Democratic presidential primary race, according to a new poll released this week.
A Quinnipiac University Poll shows Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has taken Biden’s place as the front-runner, putting considerable distance between herself and the former vice president.
“Former Vice President Joe Biden slips, Senator Elizabeth Warren steadies, Senator Bernie Sanders gets his groove back, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg breaks back into double digits,” polling analyst Mary Snow summarized in a Thursday news release.
Warren, polling at 28 percent support in the latest release, put a commanding 7 percentage point margin between herself and Biden in recent weeks — well outside the poll’s approximately three percent margin of error.
The result signifies a major shift in a Democratic primary landscape that has been in flux since the Quinnipiac University Poll became the first to predict the controversial Massachusetts progressive as in contention with Biden less than one month ago.
Other notables included Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who managed to once again break 15 percent support despite health troubles, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who returned to double-digit support after a lengthy lull.
Sampling 713 likely Democratic and left-leaning independent voters, the poll did, however, suggest the former vice president is the most likely candidate to beat President Donald Trump.
Biden more than doubles Warren under this metric, with 42 percent of voters suggesting he would defeat incumbent Trump in a general election.
Meanwhile, just 20 percent felt that way about Warren.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s lead in the race for the Democratic nomination for president has rebounded, and now stands at its widest margin since April, according to a new CNN poll.
Biden: 34%
Warren: 19%
Sanders: 16%
Buttigieg: 6%
Harris: 6% https://t.co/YIydvMMBC1— CNN (@CNN) October 23, 2019
Warren is far from the unquestioned front-runner, according to RealClearPolitics polling aggregation.
Various polls suggest Biden still leads the pack with margins ranging from one to 10 percent in the last two weeks. A recently released CNN poll even places that lead as high as 15 percentage points.
These recent polling results do not, however, minimize the noticeable slowing of support for Biden’s path to the Democratic nomination.
According to Quinnipiac, the former vice president’s electability has waned substantially — particularly in light of the Ukraine scandal.
“Biden is still viewed as the candidate who has the best chance of winning against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election,” Quinnipiac wrote, “but he is not as strong on this question as he once was. In today’s poll, Biden gets 42 percent, but this is down from 48 percent in the October 14 poll and his high of 56 percent in an April 30 poll.”
Warren, on the other hand, has continued on her staggering upward trajectory in spite of attacks from an ideologically similar Sanders and a major shakeup in the upper-most levels of her campaign.
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