Joe Biden heads into the second round of debates in Detroit this week being hailed as the Democratic presidential front-runner.
But by historical standards Biden’s poll lead and other factors mean he barely deserves the term. His place at the top of the polls is tenuous, his fundraising trails that of fifth-placed South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and the party hierarchy is largely adopting a wait-and-see approach. If elected, the former vice president would be the oldest ever occupant of the White House.
He could well follow the same trajectory as other recent-past primary candidates who started out on top but couldn’t stay there.
Biden was chosen to be President Barack Obama’s running mate in part because Obama aides assumed he would not contemplate another White House run. But he was welcomed by establishment Democrats this time around because a candidate with high name identification could challenge fellow septuagenarian Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the socialist who initially led in the polls.
Entering the race in April, Biden swiped the lead away from Sanders and took in $6.3 million over a 24-hour period, the largest fundraising number of any candidate in the Democratic primary field. By early May, Biden had a 32-point lead over his nearest competitor, Sanders, in a Hill-HarrisX poll.
This lead quickly dissipated following a series of the first round of debates, in which Biden took considerable criticism from rival Sen. Kamala Harris of California over his anti-busing efforts in the 1970s, and other events. His poll numbers put him just just a few points ahead of his nearest competitor at the time.
Although Biden has been able to stabilize his numbers, the latest Quinnipiac University poll released Monday has the former VP with 34%, Warren with 15%, Harris with 12%, and Sanders with 11%, can he continue to keep this lead going into the next debate?
Since 1972, the year after reforms were made to the nominating system, there have been 16 primary contests that did not include an incumbent president. Nine of those primaries were elections where the leader at the beginning of the campaign held the advantage all the way through the nominating convention.
Biden wants to emulate this scenario, but he is not running immediately following a Democratic incumbent. Although he is running a campaign based largely on nostalgia for the Obama-Biden years, that period ended abruptly with Trump’s 2016 election victory.
The seven other races, however, never had a clear front-runner to begin with, or the winner was ultimately a surprise when the initial front-runner lost. These primary election cycles included Hillary Clinton being viewed as the probable nominee in 2008 but ultimately losing to Obama, as well as Jeb Bush being favored in 2016 and Donald Trump receiving the Republican nomination in the end.
In the 2008 Republican primary, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani started off ahead of Arizona Sen. John McCain but fell to fourth place after he lost to McCain in the New Hampshire primary, leading to the New York Republican’s eventual defeat in other early primary contests.
Not all Democrats think Biden is condemned to Jeb Bush’s fate. Trump has dubbed him “Sleepy Joe,” just as he devastatingly labeled Bush “low energy,” which he never shook off.
“I don’t know that I buy the comparisons to Jeb as much, because I think Biden has generally been more of a dynamic member of the Senate and campaigner and he was vetted by Obama, which he likes to say, which I think is actually good for American voters,” Democratic political strategist Basil Smikle told the Washington Examiner.
“If he can hold his lead through the end of the year, even if it shrinks relative to the other candidates, he’s still in a really good position to do well in Iowa and sort of maintain his momentum for the rest of the cycle.”
Although Hillary Clinton made it out of the 2016 primary, her previous primary campaign for the White House in 2008 has also been used as a comparison to Biden’s current run, though her poll lead over Obama, establishment endorsements, and fundraising made her a much clearer favorite than Biden is now.
“I can see where folks want to make a comparison between Biden 2020 and Hillary 2008. There are some points of intersection,” Smikle said.
He added, “I think the sense that you had a candidate like Hillary who was very much involved and engaged and supportive of the party’s infrastructure running against a person like Barack Obama who used the party as a vehicle but not necessarily as a platform, I don’t think you have that direct comparison in 2020.”
