A new poll surveying Democratic Party-leaning voters finds the race to choose the party’s nominee for president in 2020 is as tight as it’s ever been, with the top two contenders sitting in a statistical tie at the moment.
According to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted August 10-13, if the primary elections were to be held today, 21 percent of Democratic voters say they would pick former Vice President Joe Biden to become the party’s nominee. Another 20 percent say their preference would be current Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Sixteen percent said they’d pick Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, while another 8 percent say they’d vote for California Sen. Kamala Harris.
The wide number of candidates to choose from — two dozen candidates were offered to respondents in the poll to pick — makes it difficult for a front-runner to distance themselves from the rest of the pack this early on. Yet Biden had a much larger lead on Warren in another Economist/YouGov poll earlier this month, when he had a six-point edge over her at the time.
The current polling data suggests that she might be on the minds of more voters, in terms of their second picks, than even Biden is. In a question asking respondents who they were considering while making their choices, 50 percent said Warren was one of their serious choices, while 47 percent said Biden was.
JUST IN: Elizabeth Warren Surges to Statistical Tie With Joe Biden in New National Poll https://t.co/nTk5fBMCC8 via @mediaite
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Thirty-nine percent said they were also considering Harris, while 38 percent of Democrats said they were considering Sanders.
On a different measure, perhaps indicating that more votes will head toward Warren as other candidates drop out, 22 percent of voters said they’d be disappointed if Biden is chosen as the party’s nominee. Twenty percent said Sanders would disappoint them, and 14 percent said Harris would be a disappointing pick as well. Just 9 percent said Warren would disappoint them as a nominee.
The poll found that 37 percent of Americans overall plan to take part in the Democratic Party’s nomination process, while 28 percent plan to participate in the Republican primaries. Sixteen percent were unsure at this time, while 19 percent said they weren’t planning to vote in either party’s nomination processes.