Polls on 2020 Dem contenders are about name recognition at this point, say pollsters

Pollsters Jim Hobart and Rob Griffin on Thursday said that polls on potential 2020 Democratic presidential contenders are mostly about name recognition two years out from the election. 

“There was a point where maybe the 2018 elections would have had a couple of frontrunners sort of rising up,” Griffin, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.” 

“There was a lot of talk around Beto [O’Rourke], there still is for that matter. But I don’t think that it’s immediately clear that there’s a front-runner,” he continued. “You can do polling about this, but it’s so early, and people’s opinions about this are so uninformed.”

“It’s really just name ID, basically,” Hobart, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, said, to which Griffin agreed. 

A recent American Barometer survey, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company found that no Democrat has broad support among the party’s base. 

The poll, which was conducted among Democrats and independents, found that 30 percent of the sample said they would prefer that “none of the above” to become the Democratic nominee when asked to choose among former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (D), California Sen. Kamala Harris (D), former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Twenty-five percent of those polled said Biden would be their preferred nominee, while 18 percent chose Sanders, and 12 percent said they wanted Clinton to be their nominee. 

— Julia Manchester