Biden Still Holds Sizable Lead Nationwide: Campaign Update
Biden has 32% support, trailed by Warren with 21%, Bernie Sanders with 14% and Kamala Harris with 7%.
(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden still maintains a significant lead in the Democratic primary, but Elizabeth Warren’s support is growing, a new Quinnipiac Poll released Tuesday found.
Biden has 32% support, trailed by Warren with 21%, Bernie Sanders with 14% and Kamala Harris with 7%. The latest poll shows a sizable jump for Warren and a slump for Harris since the debates last week in Detroit. A Quinnipiac poll released before the Detroit debates showed Warren with 15% support and Harris at 12% support.
Most important for Biden is his commanding lead among black voters with 47% backing him compared with 16% for Sanders. Only 8% of the black voters polled supported Warren and 1% backed Harris. Among the very liberal Democrats, however, Warren trounced Sanders, garnering 40% support compared to Sanders’ 20%.
Pete Buttigieg registered 5% support among all Democrats and Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke had 2%. The poll’s margin of error is 4.1%.
“Senator Elizabeth Warren’s policy-heavy presentation and former Vice President Joseph Biden’s ability to handle the heat from all corners put them on top,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in a statement. “Senator Kamala Harris, whose 20% score put her neck-and-neck with Biden in a Quinnipiac University poll July 2 after the first debate, is now a distant fourth with 7%.”
Tom Steyer Spends on Ads, Struggles in Polls (3:10 P.M.)
Since launching his presidential bid, billionaire Tom Steyer has booked more air time than any of his rivals, and even outpaced President Donald Trump’s campaign in online ad spending, but has hardly registered in most polls.
His deep pockets might be having an impact in early states though. Although he can’t seem to rise above 1% in national polls, a new Morning Consult poll has him at 6% among voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, sites of the first four presidential contests, where the environmental activist has been spending heavily.
Although his campaign touted the finding, it won’t help him make his way to the debate stage in Houston in September. Steyer will need to tally 2% in four national polls, all of which must be approved by the Democratic National Committee. The Morning Consult’s poll isn’t among those the DNC uses.
There’s still time for Steyer to boost his poll numbers, and he has the money to get his message out. He’s booked $7.2 million in ad buys, data from Advertising Analytics LLC show, all in markets serving early primary states. And in the last week of July, he spent $1.1 million on Google and Facebook ads, according to data from Bully Pulpit Interactive’s Campaign Tracker, topping the $891,000 the Trump campaign spent and more than doubling the amount of his nearest Democratic rival. -- Bill Allison
2020 Rivals Nipping at Biden’s Heels in NH (11:16 AM)
Joe Biden still leads among New Hampshire primary voters, but a new poll shows his top rivals are making inroads.
Biden leads with 21%, followed by Bernie Sanders with 17% and Elizabeth Warren with 14%, according to a new Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll conducted after the second Democratic debate and released Tuesday. But Sanders’s New Hampshire ranking is within the poll’s margin of error of 4.4 percentage points, and puts him in striking distance of Biden. He and Warren are statistically tied, given the margin of error.
In 2016 against Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sanders won the state with 60%.
Kamala Harris had 8% in the new poll followed by Pete Buttigieg with 6% and Tulsi Gabbard with 3%. No other candidate registered more than 1%. In the last state poll conducted by Globe and Suffolk at the end of April, Biden led with 20% followed by Sanders and Buttigieg tied at 12%. Warren had 8% support.
“In New Hampshire, the dominance of front-runner Biden and local favorites Sanders and Warren will make it very difficult for another candidate to break into the top three in the nation’s first presidential primary,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, said in a statement. -- Tyler Pager
Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders Draw Minority Support (8:45 A.M.)
Leading Democratic presidential contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders saw their support among minorities tick up over the past month amid President Donald Trump’s attacks on non-white lawmakers, a new poll found.
Both the former vice president and the Vermont senator registered a two percentage-point increase in support among racial minorities who identify as Democrats or independents from July to August in the The Reuters/Ipsos survey, bringing them each to 23%.
That poll showed support among minorities shifting away from from lesser-known candidates, including U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California, who challenged Biden’s background on race in the first 2020 presidential debate in Miami.
Harris’s support dropped five points from July, to 6%.
Perhaps tellingly, 36% of Democrats said they were looking for a candidate who could best beat Trump, according to the poll. Biden has argued he’d be be most electable candidate.
The survey tallied 1,210 responses online, including 483 minorities, from Aug. 1 to Aug. 5 and has an error margin of plus-or-minus 5 percentage points. -- Terrence Dopp
Booker to Speak on Racism, Guns at AME Church (6:00 A.M.)
Cory Booker will deliver a speech on gun violence and white nationalism at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, site of a 2015 mass shooting where an avowed white nationalist killed nine black congregants.
Booker’s speech follows back-to-back mass shootings over the weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. The alleged suspect in the massacre in El Paso published a manifesto online in which he warned that white people were being replaced by immigrants.
South Carolina is the third primary contest in the nation and the first test of black-voter strength for Democratic candidates. Biden now holds the lead among those voters.
The mass shootings have prompted renewed calls for gun control from the Democratic presidential field and increased criticism of Donald Trump and Republicans. After Trump addressed the nation Monday, Booker called the press conference a “soup of ineffective words,” according to a screenshot of a message that his campaign manager put on Twitter. -- Tyler Pager
Coming Up This Week
The 2020 Democratic field heads to Iowa for the showcase Iowa State Fair, a chance for candidates to meet with voters in the first primary contest of the presidential campaign -- and eat fattening food and view butter sculptures.
On Friday, the candidates will participate in the Iowa Wing Ding, a dinner get-together and “cattle call” for candidates to make their pitches.
--With assistance from Terrence Dopp and Tyler Pager.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Allison in Washington at ballison14@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo
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