Biden narrowly ahead in Iowa as Sanders surges, Warren drops: poll

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are leading the 2020 Democratic primary field in the crucial caucus state of Iowa as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sinks, according to a Emerson College poll released Tuesday.

Biden and Sanders are neck-and-neck at the top of the survey, garnering the support of 23 percent and 22 percent of Democratic caucusgoers, respectively. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) comes in third, at 18 percent, and Warren sits at fourth, with 12 percent.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) comes in fifth place in the poll, at 10 percent, while no other candidate breaks double digits.

While Biden remained steady from the same poll in October and Buttigieg inched up 2 points, Tuesday’s survey shows significant swings for Sanders and Warren, who are waging a protracted fight to be the primary field’s progressive figurehead.

Sanders rose 9 points from 13 percent in October’s poll, while Warren dropped by 11 points, finding herself sinking from a first-place spot to fourth in a few months’ time.

Klobuchar also enjoyed a boost as she works to burnish her centrist credentials, leaping 9 points from October when she polled at just 1 percent.

Sanders has enjoyed a months long jump in support since a heart attack thrust his campaign into uncertainty, garnering the endorsements of progressive firebrands Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) as well as National Nurses United and the Los Angeles teachers union. 

Meanwhile, Warren has seen her poll numbers in national and early state surveys tick downward as her 2020 contenders and special interest groups hammer her over her “Medicare for All” plan and how she intends to pay for it.

Polling shows Sanders and Warren to be competing for similar groups of voters, with the two candidates ranking as the top two choices among voters under the age of 50 and those who describe themselves as “very liberal,” according to the Emerson survey.

The Emerson poll surveyed 325 Democratic caucusgoers from Dec. 7 to 10 and has a margin of error of 5.4 percentage points.