The latest polling data from Morning Consult show former vice president Joe Biden climbing back into a stable lead in the Democratic presidential primary, after several weeks of running alongside Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren.
Among Democratic-primary voters surveyed over the past week, 33 percent say they support Biden compared to just 21 percent who support Warren. Still in third place, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders comes in close behind Warren with 19 percent support.
When asked who their second choice in the field would be, respondents who selected Sanders as their first choice preferred Biden to Warren as their next best option. Thirty-one percent said they’d shift to backing Biden, while 27 percent said they’d support Warren.
Trailing the three frontrunners, who have been leading in every major poll for the last several months, are California senator Kamala Harris (6 percent); South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg (5 percent); and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke tied for sixth place with businessman Andrew Yang (3 percent).
When it comes to favorability, Biden and Sanders have the edge among primary voters, with 73 percent saying they have a favorable view of each. Warren falls a bit behind with just 68 percent favorability. But Warren also has a lower unfavorable rating (14 percent) than Biden (20 percent) and Sanders (19 percent), mostly because 11 percent of voters say they recognize her name but have neither a favorable nor unfavorable view of her.
Warren’s numbers dropped a bit when Morning Consult narrowed its survey to Democratic primary or caucus voters in the early primary states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. In those four states, Biden held steady at 33 percent, but Warren dropped to 18 percent, tied with Sanders among early-primary-state voters.
In the latest state-level poll from one of the early primary states, South Carolina, Biden had a huge advantage. According to a Fox News poll out Sunday, Biden has 41 percent support in the state, while Warren comes in a distant second with 12 percent and Sanders at 10.