Joe Biden might not be at the forefront of the Democrats’ response to the coronavirus pandemic, but he’s still their top presidential pick — by a lot.
A new Echelon survey released on Thursday found that support for Biden continued to grow among Democratic voters throughout March. More than 65% of verified Democratic voters said they’d choose Biden if the primary were today, and only 29% chose Sanders. Indeed, Sanders’s support dropped from January and February by nearly 10 points.
Sanders’s drop in support is likely due to Biden’s significant primary wins in late February and early March. Those wins gave Biden the political momentum necessary to attract on-the-fence primary voters and solidify his position as the front-runner. But it’s telling that Sanders has not been able to make up the lost ground, considering it’s his platform that now defines the Democratic Party’s coronavirus relief efforts.
To mitigate the economic effects of the coronavirus shutdowns, the federal government has rightly adopted a proactive approach, providing direct cash payments to millions of people and additional relief to small businesses, corporations, and important industries. This had to be done: It was the government that forced these economic burdens on people, which means it is the government’s responsibility to relieve them.
Sanders has sought to argue that this justifies his belief that more generous government-provided assistance is a necessary component of governance all the time, not just in a crisis. And while many on the Left have argued the coronavirus has proved Sanders right (spoiler: it has not), these rhetorical admissions have yet to translate into actual, tangible support. Biden still leads the race while Sanders falls behind.
It’s possible that the coronavirus actually hurt Sanders’s standing. Indeed, James Bisbee and Dan Honig argued in a recent study that the virus prompted a political “flight to safety” among Democratic voters, away from Sanders and toward Biden, even if voters agreed with some of Sanders’s basic policies, such as universal healthcare. In the midst of financial and political uncertainty, Democratic voters are turning to someone they perceive as less risky and more stable. And that someone is Biden.
Furthermore, the social distancing measures that caused a stop to campaign events disproportionately hurt Sanders, given that the energy of his campaign was fueled by massive rallies.
Even if they may be more sympathetic to some of Sanders’s policies, voters are still rightly wary of the revolution he is promising. He would likely have lost to Biden anyways, but now his defeat is only a matter of time — the virus has made sure of that.
