Sen. Bernie Sanders is poised to end 2019 in the identical national polling position he began with 10 months ago in mid-February when he announced his presidential bid for 2020.
Sanders is comfortably in second place in a number of recent national polls, trailing only former Vice President Joe Biden. The two have put some distance between themselves and the rest of the field.
In a December poll, Biden leads the Democratic presidential primary with 31%, Sanders is second at 22% — almost identical to January surveys that had the Vermont senator polling at 23% behind Biden’s 31% — according to polling by Politico/Morning Consult.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is in third place with 15%, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is currently sitting fourth with 8% and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg rounds out the top five with 7% in Politico’s polling.
A Dec. 17 poll conducted by Emerson College has Biden (32%) and Sanders (25%) with an even larger lead over Warren (12%) and their other closest rivals.
Sanders had been trailing Warren for weeks in national and statewide polling, but overtook his progressive rival in late November and has strengthened his lead.
“Warren appears to be losing to Sanders with younger voters, and losing to Biden with older voters, making it difficult for her to secure a base,” Spencer Kimball, who oversees the Emerson College poll, said in a statement.
“With less than 50 days until the Iowa caucus, this strategy of waiting for Sanders or Biden to fall is looking shaky,” he added.
Bill McInturff, whose firm conducted a recent national poll for NBC/Wall Street Journal which has Biden at 28% and Sanders at 21%, told NBC that while the Vermont senator is well positioned, Biden is benefiting from people who have made up their minds about who they are going to support.
“Joe Biden is sitting on a stable result, with a stable political base that has shown no inclination to vote for two of the other candidates,” McInturff said.
Sanders is also performing well — polling in a top two position — in Iowa, New Hampshire, California and Nevada. The Vermont senator seems to have given up on winning South Carolina, where he has long struggled to gain support from a moderate, predominantly African American voting block.
During a swing through Las Vegas in early December, Sanders said he is well posed to win Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire, but did not mention South Carolina — where he trails Biden on average by 20 points.
Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, has also publicly stated that the plan is now to “win Iowa and then New Hampshire, and then Nevada, and California” but has omitted the Southern state as part of the strategy to the Democratic nomination.
In Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders has surged ahead of Biden, but Buttigieg narrowly leads the field in those two contests — polling at 24% while Sanders is close on his heels with 21%, according to a Dec. 16 Iowa State University survey.
In the delegate rich California, Sanders is at 26%, 3 points up on Warren, his closest rival, and 7 points up on Biden — over 400 delegates are awarded to the winner of this primary contest.
With less than two weeks left in 2019, Sanders is coming off of a debate performance in which he repeatedly attacked Biden for taking money from billionaires, supporting free trade and approving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The two top contenders for the Democratic primary also butted heads over their health care proposals.
Sanders’ campaign announced Friday that on the day of the debate, the Vermont senator received more than $1 million in donations from “tens of thousands” of people — a record fundraising day for the campaign in 2019.
