Former Vice President Joe Biden is the presumptive front-runner of the Democratic 2020 primary field, even though he has yet to declare he’s running for the Democratic nomination.
Biden has a more than 10-percentage-point edge on his closest rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, according to the latest polling averages compiled by RealClearPolitics. Biden, who told reporters last weekend he would announce his 2020 intentions “in the near term,” draws on average 27.5 percent of the vote in comparison to Sanders, who attracts almost 17 percent. Biden’s 10-point lead, however, is shrinking — a handful of earlier polls gave him a 20-point margin over the independent senator from Vermont.
Sanders, who launched his second White House bid on Tuesday and self-reported a record-breaking fundraising haul of $5.9 million in 24 hours, has a slight advantage over Sen. Kamala Harris of California. Harris is getting just over 10 percent support since declaring she was running for president.
Harris is trailed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (7.5 percent), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas (6.8 percent), and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey (5 percent), according to the RealClearPolitics averages. O’Rourke, who rose to national prominence in 2018 by losing his closer-than-expected Senate race against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, ranked higher than Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. O’Rourke told reporters in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday he was still weighing whether to vie for the White House or take another shot at a Texas Senate seat.
Klobuchar and billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg earn 3 percent of the vote a piece.
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who continues to mull his options amid his “Dignity of Work” listening tour, rounds out the top 11 compiled by RealClearPolitics alongside declared contenders Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and former Obama-era housing secretary Julian Castro with about 1 percent support.
Lower-tier candidates will be tracking their polling numbers ahead of the official Democratic National Committee debates, which are scheduled to begin in June with an event jointly hosted by NBC News, MSNBC, and Telemundo. To qualify to appear, presidential hopefuls must generate 1 percent or more of the vote in three polls put in the field between January 1, 2019, and 14 days before the debate, and have 65,000 unique donors and a minimum of 200 unique donors per state in at least 20 U.S. states.
A second debate will be broadcast on CNN in July.
