With about a month until the first nominating contests in the Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders, 78, is best-positioned in the first caucus and primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, while Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has slipped, according to CBS Battleground tracker polls.
The polls released Sunday found the Vermont senator, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg tied at 23% among likely Iowa Democratic voters, while Warren lags in fourth place at 16%. The standings remain steady since the last CBS Iowa poll in November when Sanders and Biden tied at 22%, Buttigieg had 21%, and Warren had 18%.
Sanders leads in New Hampshire with 27% support from likely Democratic voters, Biden is in second place at 25%, Warren has 18%, and Buttigieg comes in at 13%.
The New Hampshire poll shows a sharp decline in support for 70-year-old Warren. In the November version of the poll, she was in first place with 31% support, while Biden was in second place at 22%, Sanders had 20%, and Buttigieg had 16%.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, 59, improved her standing in both states, following her standout December debate performance. She came in fifth place with 7% in each state, an improvement from November when she was at 5% in Iowa and 3% in New Hampshire.
The pair of state polls are the first measuring the state of the race in the first-in-the-nation primary and caucus states in weeks. The last temperature gauge in Iowa was an Iowa State University poll in mid-December, while New Hampshire’s last poll came from WBUR/Mass Inc. in early December. Since those polls, Democratic candidates sparred in the December democratic debate over high-dollar fundraisers.
Lower-tier candidates have lamented the lack of recent polls because the Jan. 14 debate in Iowa requires a polling threshold of at least 5% support in four Democratic National Committee-approved state or national primary polls or 7% support in two single-state polls from Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, or Nevada released between Nov. 14 and Jan. 10. Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Warren have already qualified for the debate, but the CBS polls did not count toward qualification for any of the nine other candidates still in the race.
Before the Sunday CBS polls, RealClearPolitics’ average of polls found Buttigieg leading the field in Iowa at 22%, Sanders at 20%, Biden at 18.8%, and Warren at 16%. In the New Hampshire polling average, Sanders led with 19%, Buttigieg had 17.7%, Biden had 14.3%, and Warren had 13.3%.
The Iowa poll results came from 953 surveyed self-identified Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.8 points. The New Hampshire poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.3%, with its results coming from 519 self-identified Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents.
Both surveys were conducted from Dec. 27 to Jan. 3, so it does not show any movement in the field due to President Trump’s ordered strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani on Feb. 2.
