Poll: Biden leads 2020 Democrats, Warren surges to third behind Sanders

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads the pack of Democratic presidential candidates, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is on the rise, according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill.

The survey shows Biden in first place with 32 percent support among Democrats, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at 16 percent, both falling slightly from the previous poll.

{mosads}But Warren isn’t far behind. The new poll pegs her support at 13 percent — a 5-point jump since the last Harvard CAPS/Harris poll was conducted in the wake of the July Democratic presidential debates in Detroit. 

That places her third, replacing Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) who came in fourth place with 7 percent support in the latest poll. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) tied for fifth place with 4 percent support.

Only two other candidates notched above 1 percent in the survey: Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), with 3 percent, and former tech executive Andrew Yang, with 2 percent.

While Biden still holds a comfortable lead over his closest competitors, his support is down 2 points from the last Harvard CAPS/Harris poll. No candidate gained more in the latest survey than Warren, who has been steadily climbing in public polls for months.

“Biden continues in our poll to have a steady lead above his rivals but that lead in the low 30s is no guarantee of the nomination,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, said. 

“He has to show some movement soon as others are gaining in excitement and momentum. There may be scores of candidates in the race but only a few of them are getting to double digits.”

Still, Biden remains the candidate that voters see as having the best chance of defeating President Trump in 2020. Thirty-six percent of respondents pointed to the vice president as the most formidable challenger to the president, while 13 percent chose Sanders and 8 percent picked Warren. 

The Harvard CAPS/Harris poll surveyed 985 registered Democratic voters from Aug. 26-28. The poll is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll throughout 2019.

Full poll results will be posted online later this week. The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.