Poll: Buttigieg tops Harris, O’Rourke as momentum builds

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg suprassed Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) in a national poll of likely Democratic voters released Tuesday.

Buttigieg placed third, behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), with 9 percent of respondents picking him as their preferred Democratic presidential nominee, a 2 point bump from last week’s Morning Consult survey.

Biden, who has yet to announce his candidacy, still holds a wide lead, with 30 percent of respondents saying he is their preferred choice; 24 percent of those surveyed picked Sanders.

Harris dropped 1 point to 8 percent, while O’Rourke dropped 2 points to 6 percent.

{mosads}Buttigieg, who officially launched his campaign earlier this month, has been surging in polls of the 2020 race.

The Indiana mayor recently placed closely behind Biden and Sanders, the current front-runners, in polls of key early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire.

Buttigieg raised more than $7 million in the first quarter of 2019 and has already qualified for the Democratic presidential debates.

The Morning Consult survey of 14,335 likely Democratic voters was conducted between April 15-21. The margin of error for the sample is 1 point.