Biden leads in new national poll, Warren close behind in second place

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads the field of Democratic White House hopefuls, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is running a close second, according to the latest national survey from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal.

The survey finds Biden at 31 percent support, followed by Warren at 25 percent. Biden and Warren are the two biggest gainers in the poll, with Biden rising 5 points from the same survey in July and Warren picking up 6 points. 

{mosads}Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is in third place with 14 percent support, a 1-point increase from July.

The survey found that Democratic voters are most excited about the Warren campaign, with 35 percent saying they would enthusiastically cast a ballot for her, compared to 25 percent who said the same of Sanders and 23 percent who said they would be enthusiastic about voting for Biden.

Warren is also the top second choice for voters who supported someone else in the survey, with 21 percent listing her as their backup, followed by Sanders at 16 percent, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 12 percent and Biden at 11 percent.  

If first choice and second choice preferences are combined, Warren leads with 45 percent, followed by Biden at 41 percent and Sanders at 29 percent.

No other candidate has double-digit support in the poll.

Buttigieg is at 7 percent support, followed by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif) at 5 percent and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang at 4 percent.

Harris’s support has fallen dramatically since July, losing 8 points, the biggest drop of any candidate in the field. 

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) are at 2 percent each, and no other candidate received more than 1 percent support.

The NBC-Wall Street Journal poll is a qualifying survey for the Democratic presidential debates. 

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) needs only one additional poll to qualify but did not hit the 2 percent mark here.

The NBC-Wall Street Journal poll of 506 likely Democratic primary voters was conducted between Sept. 13 and Sept. 16 and has a 4.4 percentage point margin of error.