Polling and public opinion analyst Dan Cox told “What America’s Thinking” on Monday that most 2020 Democratic candidates will face an uphill battle due to their lower name recognition.
“When it comes to [Sen. Bernie] Sanders [(I-Vt.)] and [former Vice President Joe] Biden, now, they’re benefitting largely from name recognition,” Cox, a polling and public opinion research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons.
“They’ve both run national campaigns. Biden, obviously, was the former VP,” he continued.
“If you look at a candidate like [Sen.] Kamala Harris [(D-Calif.)], a third of voters, according to the Morning Consult poll, don’t even know who she is yet, so she has a lot more room to go,” he said. “We’re going to see some changes as we’re just getting this primary season started.”
A Morning Consult survey released last month found that 76 percent of voters said they had a “favorable” opinion of Biden, while only 3 percent said they had never heard of him.
Seventy-five percent said their view of Sanders was “favorable,” and less than 3 percent said they had never heard of Sanders.
The same survey found that 22 percent said they had not heard of Harris, while 26 said they had not heard of Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
— Julia Manchester
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