Warren leads Democratic field by 3 points in new national poll

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) leads the pack of Democratic presidential hopefuls but remains only narrowly ahead of former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Monday.

The poll showed Warren in first place with 30 percent support among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters nationally. Biden isn’t far behind. He notched 27 percent support in the survey, still within its 5.3 percentage point margin of error.

{mosads}The only other candidate to register double-digit support in the poll was Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who came in with 11 percent support. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) rounded out the top five with 8 percent and 4 percent support, respectively.

The poll is the latest to show Warren’s candidacy on the rise. A similar survey from Quinnipiac released last week also placed the Massachusetts senator in the lead, with 29 percent support. That same poll showed Biden in second place, with 26 percent.

The latest Quinnipiac poll also shows a noticeable drop for Sanders, who has been off the campaign trail in recent weeks after suffering a heart attack. He fell from 16 percent in the survey released last week to 11 percent in the poll released on Monday, suggesting that his recent absence and lingering questions about his health may be taking a toll on his support.

For Warren, the poll also suggests that some voters who once doubted her ability to win the presidency in 2020 should she become the Democratic nominee are now more bullish about her candidacy. 

Twenty-one percent of respondents said that she is the candidate with the best chance of beating President Trump next year, up from 9 percent in another Quinnipiac poll released on Aug. 9. 

Biden still leads the pack on that particular question. Forty-eight percent of respondents said that he was best suited to take on Trump in 2020, down only slightly from 49 percent in August. 

The poll — one of several released in recent weeks that showed Biden losing ground to Warren — came a day before 12 candidates, including the two front-runners, take the stage in Westerville, Ohio, for the fourth Democratic presidential debate.

Tim Malloy, a polling analyst at Quinnipiac University, said that the latest survey — the third in a row from the university showing Warren in the lead — suggests that the Massachusetts Democrat has “staying power.” 

That may be particularly valuable as she heads into the next debate, where her rising poll numbers could make her a target for her rivals for the Democratic nomination.

“For Senator Warren, the third straight time essentially tied at the top is the charm,” Malloy said in a statement. “Her candidacy clearly has staying power going into the debate.”

The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 505 Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents by telephone from Oct. 11 to 13 and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.