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Senator Elizabeth Warren has dropped six points in the Real Clear Politics voter polls on the Democrat race for president.
Joe Biden now leads Warren 29.4-23.4. He’s ahead of Sanders by 13.8 points.
Warren had pulled to within a half-point of the former vice president last week, but now Biden has regained the lead on the strength of three recent polls that put him ahead by double digits.
Where Biden was losing most of the polls, but staying just ahead of Warren thanks to the margins in the polls he did win, he appears to be retaking control of the race.
Biden defeated Warren in three of the last five polls in the RCP Average.
The Polls
Biden’s wins were in the double digits, while Warren’s pair put her only a few points ahead of her 76-year-old competitor.
Politico/Morning Consult of October 7-12 put Biden 11 points ahead of Warren, 32-21. Fox News, October 6-8, has Biden defeating Warren 32-22, while The Hill/Harris X of October 6-8 gave him a strong 14-point lead, 31-15.
Those are strong numbers given that Biden was hanging on to the top spot by his fingernails last week. He was polling at 26.5, Warren at 26.
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As for her numbers, Warren notched a 30-27 three-point victory with Quinnipiac, this one taken October 11-13. That’s the same number she pulled in Quinnipiac October 4-7.
Economist/YouGov of October 6-8 put Warren ahead of Biden by four, 29-25.
The shift between the two candidates added 2.9 points to Biden’s total, and took 2.6 points from Warren.
Iowa, New Hampshire
Despite that national lead, Biden is falling farther behind Warren in the two important early primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire.
In Iowa, Warren prevailed in the last three polls to claim a 22.7-19.3 lead over Biden, which expanded her lead to 3.4 points from last week’s 2.7. Warren won two of the last three polls and tied the third.
Even more significantly, Warren surpassed Biden in New Hampshire, and leads 27.3-24, a 3.3-point margin. Warren prevailed in the last three polls, although in two of them she only won by a point.
Last week, Biden led in New Hampshire 23.2-21, a margin of 2.2
Sanders and the Rest
Recovering from a heart attack, Sanders, 78, sits in third nationally at 15.6 points, about 14, again, behind Biden and eight behind Warren.
If the polls mean anything, the race now is likely between Biden and Warren, both of whom must answer questions about lies and scandals. Warren has never come clean about her claims of Indian pedigree and flat-out lied about the shooting of black thug Michael Brown. She called the police officer who shot Brown in self-defense, Darren Wilson, a murderer.
Biden must explain why, when he was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine, he forced the country to fire a top prosecutor who was investigating his son’s employer. Even if it’s true that Biden did “nothing wrong,” as he says, he must still tell voters why he didn’t recuse himself from the matter given his son’s involvement. At best, Biden is guilty of woeful judgment.
None of that, however, has helped the elderly socialist, who plans to spend nearly $10 trillion a year through the next decade to implement proposals that will surpass even the generous welfare states of Europe.
The top three needn’t worry about the rest of the candidates, who are polling at abysmally low rates of voter support:
Pete Buttigieg 5.6
Kamala Harris 5.2
Beto O’Rourke: 2.8
Andrew Yang 2.2
Amy Klobuchar: 1.8
Cory Booker: 1.6
Tom Steyer: 1.4
Tulsi Gabbard: 1.2
Michael Bennet 1.0
Julián Castro: 0.8
It won’t be long before those trailing O’Rourke start dropping out of the race, which invites the question of whom those voters will support once their first choices are gone.
Photo: AP Images
