Ahead of next week’s second primary debates, the Democratic roster has reverted to its usual order, with Biden reigning over the pack of 22 candidates at 33 percent, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Monday. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont retained his familiar second-place slot at 18 percent, followed by Warren who is perched at 14 percent.
Recent polling suggested that Warren had been capitalizing on her grassroots popularity and policy-driven campaign; she was measured at one point in a second-place tie with Sanders, sitting just below Biden. But despite her previous ascendance, Monday’s survey relegated her back to third place and thrust Biden back into a tier of his own.
Harris has perhaps earned the most distinct structural advantage due to her debate performance in late June, which doubled her share of support in the polls among Democratic primary voters, a bump that has managed to sustain itself this many weeks later. Warren, on the other hand, began to see her candidacy steadily rise as early as mid-May, a bout of growth that has come about while candidates like South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg have been on the decline since interest in his campaign peaked in late April.
Pollsters caution that one of the primary factors in early-race political surveys is the undue influence of name recognition, which could serve to crowd out potentially popular candidates whose campaigns won’t be embraced until their profiles have had time to trickle through the media filter to less politically-engaged voters. Biden is no doubt the largest beneficiary of name recognition, a privilege that Sanders enjoys to a lesser extent as well.
The grouping of candidates in the Morning Consult survey is also reflected in voter attitudes about second-choice selections, a potentially troubling development for less prominent figures hoping to break through the bulging lineup of candidates.
Though Biden remains dominant in Monday’s poll, a plurality of his supporters, at 26 percent, would migrate to Sanders as their second choice. A plurality of Sanders supporters would likewise migrate to Biden. This significantly reduces the pool of voters available to third- and fourth-tier candidates. A plurality of Warren supporters would elect Harris as a second choice, and vice versa, cementing the two women senators as the pool’s second tier.
Biden and Sanders are handily leading the party’s favorability rankings as well, at 73 percent and 71 percent respectively. These supermajority favorability ratings give the leading candidates wide latitude to improve upon their current performance and potentially cull new supporters should other candidates drop out. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has the highest unfavorability rating of any candidate, at 24 percent.
