The new data, which shows Biden earning the support of about 1 in 3 Democratic voters, stands in contrast to a poll published Monday that showed a virtual three-way tie between Biden, Warren and Sanders at about 20% support each. On Wednesday, the director of that poll called those results an outlier.
The latest round of polling suggests that Biden’s national lead — at this early stage in the campaign — has been relatively durable throughout the summer. It has been fueled in part by the former vice president’s strong name recognition, calculations about general election viability and goodwill from rank-and-file Democratic voters, even as there are signs of greater volatility on the ground for Biden in the early-voting presidential primary states.
Still, national polls can offer a snapshot of the Democratic electorate’s mood and of the extent to which various controversies have caught the attention of voters. One of the polls published Wednesday, conducted by Quinnipiac University, showed Biden as the top choice of 32% of Democratic voters and independent voters who lean Democratic. Warren came in at 19%, and Sanders was at 15%.
Those numbers were close to the figures Quinnipiac found at the beginning of the month, with Biden’s standing unchanged despite several weeks of scrutiny over a series of verbal gaffes.
Separately, a poll from USA Today and Suffolk University also found Biden at 32%, followed by Warren at 14% and Sanders at 12%.
Those numbers stand in contrast to a Monmouth University Poll that drew attention from the news media, including The New York Times, earlier in the week. It showed Biden plummeting 13 percentage points from June, putting him at 19%, with Warren and Sanders at 20% each. On Wednesday, Patrick Murray, director of that poll, said in a statement that it was clear the results had diverged from the polling consensus.
“It occurs very infrequently, but every pollster who has been in this business a while recognizes that outliers happen,” Murray said. “This appears to be one of those instances.”
Because there is no national primary, the standing of the candidates in the early-voting primary states may matter far more than nationwide snapshots. Some surveys this summer have shown Biden’s lead in Iowa and New Hampshire ebb since he entered the race in April, and conversations with voters in Iowa have revealed signs of an enthusiasm challenge for the front-runner.
Warren and Sanders, meanwhile, have established themselves in a tier above the rest of the Democratic field. No other candidate has consistently reached double-digit support in recent surveys, and more than a dozen candidates got just 1% in this week’s polls — or less.
The Quinnipiac poll, conducted Aug. 21-26, and the Suffolk poll, conducted Aug. 20-25, had margins of sampling error of about 5 percentage points among Democratic voters. The Monmouth poll, conducted Aug. 16-20, had a margin of error of about 6 points. All three were conducted by telephone.
The latest round of polling also suggests that the Democratic candidates are on track to have only one presidential debate next month, after two rounds of two-night debates earlier this summer. As of Wednesday’s deadline to qualify for the September debate, only 10 candidates had done so, meaning they can all fit on one stage under the rules set by the Democratic National Committee.
The committee requires that candidates land 130,000 individual donors and 2% support in at least four qualifying polls in order to make the debate stage.
Billionaire impeachment activist Tom Steyer was close to meeting those benchmarks, collecting enough donors and hitting the 2% requirement in three polls so far. But he failed to reach 2% in either of the polls published Wednesday morning, leaving him one poll short as the midnight deadline approached.
This article originally appeared in
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