Elizabeth Warren Overtakes Biden to Lead in Latest Iowa Poll

(Bloomberg) -- Elizabeth Warren took the lead in Iowa in a new poll released Saturday, barely dislodging former Vice President Joe Biden from the No. 1 spot and putting the two of them in a statistical tie in a key state on the road to the nomination.

Warren has the support of 22% of likely participants in the Iowa caucuses, up 7 percentage points from June. Biden was second with 20%, down slightly from June. Though the result is in the poll’s 4 percentage point margin of error, it’s the first time Warren has led Biden in the Iowa Poll series.

Bernie Sanders was in third place at 11% and Pete Buttigieg stayed in fourth place ahead of Kamala Harris, but dropped slightly to 9% of poll respondents.

Harris fell 1 percentage point from June to poll at 6%, while Amy Klobuchar and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker both polled at 3%. Billionaire businessman Tom Steyer, Congressman Beto O’Rourke, Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard and businessman Andrew Yang polled at 2%. All other candidates polled at 1% or less.

Still, the field is fluid. Nearly two thirds of respondents said they still haven’t made their final decisions and could be persuaded to support another candidate.

Many of the candidates are focusing resources on Iowa. A strong performance in the first nominating contest, on Feb. 3, can catapult an underdog to victory by providing momentum in the early nominating states that follow, New Hampshire, Nevada South Carolina. Biden earlier this month called Iowa “the key to the kingdom.”

Warren’s rise in the polls comes after her campaign spent the summer building a strong organizing team in the state, with more than 65 staff members. In August, she rolled out plans targeted at the farm economy and helping America’s rural communities rebound, both key issues in Iowa. She embarked on a four-day state swing to pitch the plans to potential caucus goers. Warren events have been bringing in increasingly larger crowds, with 2,000 people showing up at a rally last week in Iowa City.

By contrast, Biden has been slower to build an operation in the state. He joined the race months after Warren jumped in and Iowa political strategists say his operation has not yet matched hers.

Sanders, who has by far the largest infrastructure in Iowa, will begin on Monday a swing through four Iowa counties that supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but went for Donald Trump in 2016. The “Bernie Beats Trump Tour” is designed to show that Sanders can win back rust-belt voters in states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania who turned away from the Democrats in the last cycle. Sanders lost Iowa to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by the slimmest margin in the caucuses’ history.

His campaign is relying on an army of 25,000 organizers and volunteers who have phoned and texted voters, or knocked on their doors. The campaign said it had contacted 1 million Iowa voters. In addition, it said it held more than 1,300 organizing events with supporters. In coming days, Sanders’ backers are hosting more than 165 parties, where volunteers will train with campaign field staff.

The Harris campaign announced last week that it was intensifying its efforts in Iowa, shifting its focus from South Carolina, the third nominating contest in the country with a majority-black Democratic voting base.

Harris plans to double its organizers in Iowa to 120 from 65 and said the candidate would visit the state every week.

The Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll was released Saturday as 18 candidates gathered in Iowa to attend the Polk County Steak Fry. The poll of 602 likely 2020 Democratic caucus participants was conducted by Selzer & Co. from Sept. 14-18.

--With assistance from Tyler Pager.

To contact the reporter on this story: Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou in Des Moines at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann

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