A Des Moines Register/Mediacom/CNN Iowa Poll provides a window into how the Democrat race for the 2020 nomination is shaping up. Joe Biden still leads with (24 percent) followed by neck-and-neck Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) (16 percent) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) (15 percent) alongside South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg (14 percent).
A slew of the 23 Democrat candidates is in the single digits with Sen. Kamala Harris leading that pack with seven percent and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke with two percent each.
And a few candidates seem to be already losing the race with nine who garnered zero percent support, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA).
“We’re starting to see the people who are planning to caucus start to solidify,” J. Ann Selzer, president of the Des Moines-based Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll, said in the Register report. “There’s a lot more commitment than we normally see this early.”
“And some of these candidates who’ve been under the radar start to surface and compete with Joe Biden,” Selzer said.
“Biden and Sanders have fallen in first and second in nearly every poll conducted since March,” Newsweek reported. “And while Warren and Buttigieg have seen the most steady, significant gains in recent polls, O’Rourke has steadily fallen back.”
“It’s like with the vitriol and the hatred and all the bad things people say — he seems to be coming out fresh,” Patti Thacker, a Cedar Rapids poll respondent said about Buttigieg in the Register report. “He wants to get the country into a new mode and give us new hope there really is something better than what’s been happening.”
“It is the first poll to account for new rules put forth by the Iowa Democratic Party that will allow Iowa voters to participate in a virtual caucus via phone or computer,” Newsweek noted in its report.
The Des Moines Register/Mediacom/CNN Iowa Poll is a survey of 600 likely 2020 Democratic caucus participants, including 433 in-person participants and 167 virtual participants, taken from June 2 to June 5. The share of responses from likely virtual participants was adjusted to 10 percent of the final total to reflect expected virtual caucus rules. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points and “totals may not add to 100 percent due to rounding.”
‘The poll asked respondents who their first choice is for president,” the Register reported.
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