Former Vice President Joe Biden is the overwhelming favorite of people who formerly supported Hillary Clinton’s successful 2016 bid to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, a new poll released Thursday found.
In a Hill-HarrisX survey of registered voters who identified as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents who backed Clinton, Biden was named by 41 percent as their pick to be the party’s 2020 presidential nominee.
Biden’s finished far ahead of second-place finisher South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg who was named by 9 percent of onetime Clinton supporters.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) each received 8 percent while Clinton’s closest 2016 challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was the pick for 6 percent of the respondents.
Seventeen percent of those who once backed the former Secretary of State’s 2016 presidential bid said they were undecided about who they preferred in the current Democratic race.
Sanders fared much better among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who said they opposed Clinton in 2016, but it appears that the Vermont senator may not be as popular among people who had once supported him.
Twenty-seven percent of respondents who said they had previously backed someone other than Clinton said they supported Sanders this time. In the previous Democratic race, Sanders received 43 percent of the primary and caucus ballots that were cast.
Among respondents who said that they had backed Sanders in 2016, 39 percent said they were supporting him this time.
Biden was the 2020 choice of 21 percent of respondents who had once opposed Clinton. Warren was named by 8 percent of the group. All of the other candidates were named by 3 percent or fewer by the former Clinton opponents. Twenty percent said they had not decided who to support.
The survey was taken online May 17-18 among a statistically representative sample of 448 registered voters who said they were Democrats or independents who favored the Democratic Party. It has a sampling margin of error of 4.6 percentage points and a confidence level of 95 percent.
Thirty-three percent of all respondents said they supported Biden to become the nominee, 14 percent backed Sanders, 8 percent preferred Warren, 6 percent Buttigieg and Harris, and 5 percent picked O’Rourke.
—Matthew Sheffield
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