Democrat presidential candidates Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren have been all but tied for about a week, with Biden holding a 2.2-point lead in the Real Clear Politics average heading into the weekend.
But recent polls have knocked another 1.7 points off Biden’s once-commanding lead.
As of now, he’s just a half-point ahead of his closest contender, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who in turn has eclipsed socialist Bernie Sanders, whose days as a candidate are likely numbered because of a heart attack.
The Most Recent Polls
To understand how the mighty Biden has fallen, consider this. Of 144 polls since last October, early ones showed Biden holding what appeared to be an insurmountable lead. Until recently, his opponents never surpassed him and tied him only twice, and some polls put the former vice president more than 30 points ahead of his rivals.
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These days, though, he’s losing to Warren consistently. In four of the last seven polls and three of the last four, Warren has prevailed.
The breakdown of those latest surveys suggest that support for Biden has dramatically weakened in the past few weeks, as he has grappled with questions not only about his mental acuity and possible dementia because of his garbled, slurred, stuttering speeches, but also about his role in firing a prosecutor in Ukraine who was investigating his son’s employer.
Indeed, Biden remains in the lead by 0.5 points — 26.5-26 — only because the three polls that still have him ahead are in double digits.
One of those was the most recent Politico/Morning Consult voters survey for September 30-October 6, which put him ahead 12 points, 33 percent to 21. That’s a bright spot in the data given that Warren, again, won the three previous surveys.
Warren came out on top 27-26 in the latest IBD/TIPP poll of September 26-October 3. She bested Biden by six points, 28-22, in the Economist/YouGov survey of September 28-October 1. Warren won 28-25 in a Monmouth poll of September 23-29.
As all-important primary-caucus states go, Biden and Warren have split Iowa and New Hampshire. Warren is ahead in the Iowa RCP average by 2.7, 23-20.3, having won two of the latest three polls there.
In New Hampshire, Biden won just two of the last five polls, but maintains a 2.2-point lead over Warren, 23.2-21, on the strength of his past numbers.
Sanders and the Others
The data also show something else, however. The other contenders are likely finished.
Though Sanders is somewhat competitive at 14.3, again, a heart attack sent the 78-year-old Soviet apologist back home to rest and recuperate. His days as a candidate are likely over, much to the relief of Americans who enjoy having full shelves at the grocery and access to such luxuries as toilet paper and toothpaste.
A look at the rest of the Democrat candidates must discourage the many special interests who count on the Democrat Party to be a vehicle for their pet causes.
Polling at six percent is South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who thinks he is married to man, while angry woman Kamala Harris, whose career took off after she served in several positions under former California House Speaker Willie Brown, is at 4.8 percent.
Andrew Yang, whom no one had ever heard of until he decided to run for president, is actually running ahead of more well-known Democrats and polling at 2.8 percent.
The rest? It’s almost embarrassing to mention them:
Beto O’Rourke: 2.3
Cory Booker: 1.3
Tulsi Gabbard: 1.0
Amy Klobuchar: 1.0
Julian Castro: 1.0
Michael Bennet: 0.8
Tom Steyer: 0.8
The Biden-Warren Scandals
A problem for the Democrats is that major scandals have beset their top two candidates.
Biden must, in the end, fully explain his role in the firing of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in March 2016. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine if it didn’t pink-slip Shokin, who was investigating Burisma Holdings, the company that employed and enriched Biden’s son, Hunter.
Warren has a different problem. She has trouble telling the truth.
Having falsely claimed she was Indian some time ago, Warren most recently claimed, again falsely, that an employer fired her for being pregnant. And, like Biden, she’s a plagiarist. Writing as a “Cherokee,” she contributed to a “Native American” cookbook, Pow Wow Chow: A Collection of Recipes From Families of the Five Civilized Tribes, that just happened to contain cribbed recipes from the New York Times.
But those lies pale next to her smear of Officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Michael Brown in 2014. On the fifth anniversary of Brown’s death, Warren joined a Twitter lynch mob and wrote that Wilson “murdered” the black thug.
A grand jury refused to indict Wilson, and the Obama Justice Department concluded that he defended himself when he shot and killed Brown.
Photo: AP Images
