South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg has slipped 4 percentage points in a new Hill-HarrisX poll of the Democratic presidential primary race that finds former Vice President Joe Biden still leading the pack.
The nationwide survey published Wednesday found that Buttigieg dropped from 9 percent support to 5 percent among likely Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents. The South Bend mayor is now in a dead heat for fourth place with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also received 5 percent support.
Buttigieg had recently worked his way to the front of the 2020 Democratic primary, particularly in early primary and caucus states Iowa and New Hampshire. According to the RealClearPolitics averages, Buttigieg leads with 22.4 percent support in Iowa and holds second place in New Hampshire with 17.7 percent support, behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 19 percent.
Biden, meanwhile, continues to top the Hill-HarrisX survey at 29 percent.
Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) followed, each receiving 13 percent support as they jockey to claim the mantle of the party’s progressive wing.
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro has 4 percent support, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang and billionaire Tom Steyer each garnered 3 percent. The rest of the Democratic field registered at 2 percent or less.
The survey comes ahead of Thursday’s 2020 primary debate in Los Angeles, where seven candidates are poised to take the stage.
The sixth Democratic debate has been threatened by two separate labor disputes.
The event was initially supposed to be held at the University of California-Los Angeles but was moved after a local labor group accused the university of “illegal practices” and announced that it was boycotting campus speakers.
The debate’s new location at Loyola Marymount University has also faced a boycott over a fight with a union representing university workers. All seven of the Democrats who qualified for the debate at first threatened to skip the event due to the conflict, but the union has since announced an agreement with food services company Sodexo, allowing for it to continue as planned.
The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted among 456 likely Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents between Dec. 13 and 14. It has a margin of error of 4.6 percent points.
—Tess Bonn
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