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An exclusive national poll conducted days before tonight’s Democratic primary debate on MSNBC shows the top three candidates remain former vice president Joe Biden, senator Bernie Sanders, and senator Elizabeth Warren. The new polling data, and Warren’s rise to compete with Sanders in a second-place deadlock, helps reveal the role generational divides are playing in the election, which begins in earnest with Iowa’s first-in-the nation caucuses in January.
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The scrap between the three front-runners has played out as a generational conflict: Biden, who offers himself as a moderate, leads the field by winning voters older than 45, who make up the majority of the primary participants. Sanders, a self-described socialist, has won his lead among voters under 30. And Warren, who portrays herself as a capitalist with plans for deep structural reform, has been the candidate with the most balanced appeal, with her recent gains coming among voters ages 30 to 44.
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The poll asked likely voters 1 to rank the primary candidates, a useful way to understand the broader preferences of voters who will not have to make a final decision for months and may see the field winnowed before they do. When the voting starts, second-tier candidates like South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who now leads Iowa polls, could pop nationally, and long-shot campaigns will drop out once the voters start making their choices. In our most recent poll, likely voters who aren’t backing any of the front-runners ranked Warren highest among the top three.
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We’re not the first to spot this trend, which suggests her campaign may offer something of a consensus as a crowded field shrinks. The question facing her team is whether she can become the number one choice. Her own supporters report they are less confident that she can win a general election than the supporters of the other two leading candidates, which may be a recognition (or internalization) of misogyny at work in the election.
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