It’s looking like it will be former Vice President Joe Biden who will face-off against President Trump in 2020, if a new poll is an accurate reflection of Democratic voters.
A Hill-Harris poll released on Monday showed Biden with a whopping 32-point lead over the second-place finisher, Senator Bernie Sanders, 46% to 14%. Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg was in third place at 8%; Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) garnered 7%. Mallory Newall, the director of research at Ipsos Public Affairs, commented, “Biden has seen a little bit of a bump from his announcement, anywhere from 12 to 15 percentage points in most polls that I’ve seen. I think his standing is strong at this point but again, you have to keep in mind that he is by far the best known in the race.”
As The Hill noted, “Polls taken since the former vice president’s official declaration have shown him receiving support in the upper 30s to lower 40s, about twice as much as Sanders, his next closest rival.”
The rest of the field: California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris (6%), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) with 3% each; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), former HUD secretary Julian Castro, former Rep. John Delaney (D-MD), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) all received 2% or lower.
No other candidate received more than 1%.
Two candidates who seemed to be catching fire early in the campaign, Harris and O’Rourke, have faltered badly. As The Daily Wire reported Monday:
A new poll of Iowa, New Hampshire & South Carolina Democratic primary voters reveals that erstwhile leading candidates Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) lag far behind numerous other candidates.
The Firehouse-Optimus poll found that in Iowa, Harris garnered only 4.9% of the vote, with O’Rourke trailing her at 2.7%. The two candidates fell far behind former Vice President Joe Biden, at 34.9%, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at 13.7%, Pete Buttigieg, at 11.4%, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with 10.4%.
In New Hampshire, Biden got 34.%, Sanders 15.5%, Buttigieg 9.7%, Warren 9.1%. Harris 7.0%, and O’Rourke 3.0%. In South Carolina, Biden garnered 48.3%, Sanders 11.9%, Buttigieg 5.2%, Warren 4.5%. Harris 4.3%, and O’Rourke 1.2%.
Biden’s numbers seem to be holding up despite various hits he has taken recently, including his son Hunter’s alleged connection to a Ukrainian political corruption scandal, of which The New York Times reported that new information showed “how Hunter Biden and his American business partners were part of a broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connected Democrats during a period when the company was facing investigations backed not just by domestic Ukrainian forces but by officials in the Obama administration.”
Other hits: reports that Biden’s staffers were reportedly physically blocking off reporters from covering the Democrat on the 2020 campaign trail, presumably at the candidate’s directive, as The Daily Wire reported. Another: a racially-charged clip of Biden from 2007 discussing condom use in the black community and AIDS testing.
