Elizabeth Warren has a narrow lead over Joe Biden in the race for the Democratic Party nomination, and Donald Trump is wildly unpopular.
These are the key findings in the latest Quinnipiac University national poll, released on Wednesday.
Warren is at 27 percent among Democratic voters and independent voters who lean Democratic, with Biden at 25 percent.
Bernie Sanders is still in shouting range, at 16 percent. Further back is Pete Buttigieg at 7 percent, and Kamala Harris at 3 percent.
No other candidate tops 2 percent.
This poll marks the first time in the 2020 cycle that any candidate other than Biden has had the lead in the Democratic Party presidential race.
In the August national poll from Quinnipiac, Biden received 32 percent, Warren had 19 percent, Sanders got 15 percent, Harris had 7 percent, and Buttigieg got 5 percent.
“After trailing Biden by double digits since March in the race for the Democratic nomination, Warren catches Biden,” said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy. “We now have a race with two candidates at the top of the field, and they’re leaving the rest of the pack behind.”
The biggest movement toward Warren has been among white voters with a college degree. These voters were split in August, with 29 percent supporting Biden and 25 percent supporting Warren, and today they support Warren over Biden 37 percent to 20 percent.
“Dig a little deeper, and the reasons behind Warren’s rise become more clear. She generates a lot of excitement as a potential nominee,” Malloy said.
Democratic and Democratic leaning voters, who said by a 70-18 margin that they would be excited if she became the 2020 Democratic nominee. Biden and Sanders would also excite a majority of these voters, who say 56-35 that they would be excited about Biden and 55-38 that they would be excited about Sanders.
Favorability is mixed for the two Democratic frontrunners, who are not surprisingly strong among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents – Warren at a 74-10 split, Biden at 72-19 – but split among voters overall.
Biden’s favorability is at 45-45 among all voters; Warren’s is at 39-41.
Where this matters, of course, is in relation to Trump, who is deep underwater in favorability, at a 38-55 split among all voters, which is actually slightly better than where he was in the leadup to the 2016 election.
A September 2016 Quinnipiac poll had Trump’s favorability at a 36-57 split. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was in the same vicinity, though, at a 41-55 split.
Which means: you can expect Trump, and his itchy Twitter fingers, to muddy the waters as much as possible between now and November 2020, as if he isn’t doing that already.
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are solidly behind the president, with 84 percent saying they would be very or somewhat satisfied with him as the GOP nominee.
That’s the good news for Trump. The bad news: 54 percent of voters say they will definitely not vote for him in 2020.
Thirty-three percent say they definitely will vote for him, and 10 percent are considering it.
See above, about muddying the waters, and getting a chunk of the 54 percent who definitely won’t vote for him to also not vote for whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being.
Story by Chris Graham
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