Shock First-In-The-Nation Primary Poll: Biden Opens Up A Big Lead

CONCORD, NH — Former Vice President Joe Biden has never actually won or lost a presidential primary by himself. While he did appear on the ballot as the running mate of President Barack Obama in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary in 2012, he imploded during his two previous runs for president. The first was due to a plagiarism scandal in 1988. The second time, in 2008, he dropped out after getting shellacked in the Iowa Caucuses before Granite State voters had the chance to judge him at the ballot box.

But yesterday’s Monmouth University Poll of Democrats in the state shows the elder statesmen of the party is the clear frontrunner in 2020, even though the contest is still in its infancy.

Of the more than 20 candidates running for president in the Democrat’s primary, more than a third – 36 percent – said they were supporting Biden. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, who decisively won the primary in 2016 and has been leading in nearly all the early polling thus far, placed second with 18 percent.

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, IN, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, and U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-CA, all received between 6 and 9 percent, in the middle pack of the field.

Others earned less than 2 percent of the vote with 13 candidates polling at less than 1 percent or no support at all. Eleven percent of those polled said they were undecided.

“As other polls have shown, Biden officially enters the race as a clear front-runner,” said Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement. “He is the preferred candidate of voters who want someone to take up Obama’s mantle but it does not seem that this is a decisive factor right now.”

As with all polling, the devil is in the details, deep inside the data.

For this poll, 987 registered voters were contacted but only 376 voters responded as “likely voters.”

Sixty-one percent of those polled were registered Democrats with 38 percent saying they were not affiliated with a party or answering “other.” Fifty-eight percent polled were women and 42 percent did not have a college degree. The margin of error of the poll is plus or minus 5.1 percent, meaning that it is still a competitive race.

Not unlike past elections, electability appears to be a factor in the minds of the voters polled. Murray noted that the best opportunity to beat President Donald Trump – not necessarily a public policy initiative – was most important to about two-thirds of those polled.

Healthcare was also the issue on the minds of most voters – at a whopping 41 percent.

When asked to make a second choice, Warren received 15 percent with Harris earning 12 and Biden and Sanders getting 11 percent. Twenty-two percent were undecided. Warren also received the highest unfavorable rating – 24 percent – with 19 percent viewing Sanders unfavorably.