Sanders Leads Presidential Field in Poll of Iowa Democrats
Bernie Sanders has taken a narrow lead in Iowa for the first time, according to a Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll.
(Bloomberg) -- Bernie Sanders has taken a narrow lead in Iowa for the first time, according to a Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll released Friday.
Sanders leads in Iowa with 20% support, up 5 percentage points since November. Elizabeth Warren is in second place at 17%, virtually tied with Pete Buttigieg at 16%, leaving national front-runner Joe Biden in fourth place at 15%.
The poll of 701 likely Democratic caucus goers conducted Jan. 2-8 by Selzer & Co. and the FiveThirtyEight blog had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
Biden, whose support in the poll was unchanged from November, has struggled to translate his national appeal in Iowa. His team got off to a slow start there, months behind all his top opponents, and got low marks for its lack of engagement with key Democrats.
His campaign says he has made inroads in the state as he’s spent more time there, including more days in December than any other candidate.
“It’s safe to say that we definitely feel that things are moving in the right direction here,” deputy campaign manager Pete Kavanaugh told Bloomberg News last week in the middle of a five-day bus tour of the state.
The poll also signals trouble for Buttigieg, who is down 9 percentage points from the same Iowa survey in November, when he was the front-runner.
Still, the race remains fluid. With less than a month until the Feb. 3 caucuses, almost half of caucus goers said they could be persuaded to support a different candidate in the next three weeks, while 13% said they had not yet decided on a favorite.
None of the other candidates broke out of the single digits. Amy Klobuchar was at 6%, while Cory Booker held steady from November at 3%. Andrew Yang gained 2 percentage points to reach 5%. Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Steyer came in at 2%.
Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, polled at 1%, though he isn’t campaigning in the state.
The poll comes before a debate of Democratic candidates in Des Moines on Tuesday. Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Sanders, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer have all qualified to participate so far.
Candidates need a score of 5% in at least four national polls, or 7% in at least two early-state polls, as well as 225,000 unique donors from 20 states.
--With assistance from Jennifer Epstein.
To contact the reporter on this story: Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou in Washington at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, John Harney
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.