Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are leading the rest of the Democratic presidential primary field by double digits, according to a new poll released Tuesday by Morning Consult.
Biden, who has yet to announce whether he will enter the 2020 race, leads the pack with 31 percent, the survey found. Coming in a close second is Sanders, with 27 percent support among Democratic primary voters.
{mosads}The poll results signal that, if Biden enters the race, he’s likely to emerge as an early front-runner in an otherwise crowded primary contest.
It also suggests that Sanders, who announced his second bid for the White House last month, has early momentum among the very voters he’ll need to court if he hopes to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
The Morning Consult poll shows Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) with 11 percent support among Democratic primary voters, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) took 7 percent and 6 percent respectively.
O’Rourke has not yet said whether he will mount a presidential campaign, though he is expected to do so soon.
When it comes to Democratic primary voters in the four early-voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — Biden and Sanders have even more support, with 34 percent and 29 percent respectively.
Harris takes 8 percent support among voters in those states, according to the Morning Consult poll.
Among the 31 percent of Democratic primary voters who said that Biden was there first choice, 28 percent pointed to Sanders as their second pick. Conversely, 29 percent of those who named Sanders as their top choice picked Biden as their No. 2.
The Morning Consult poll is based on online interviews with 12,560 registered voters who said they may vote in a 2020 Democratic primary or caucus. The survey was conducted from Feb. 25 to March 3 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.