Massachusetts Senator and 2020 hopeful Elizabeth Warren is leading the pack in the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll released on Saturday night. In the latest data, Warren rolled past former Vice President Joe Biden by two percentage points. As some foundation, the survey was conducted between September 14 and 18, has a margin of error of 4%, and included 602 likely Democratic caucusgoers.
In specifics, 22% of respondents put Warren as their first choice, with Biden garnering 20%, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders rounding out the top three with 11%.
“This is the first major shakeup. It’s the first time we’ve had someone other than Joe Biden at the top of the leaderboard,” J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., who conducted the poll, stated to the Des Moines Register.
None of the other candidates got into the double digits. Mayor Pete Buttigieg came in at 9% and California Senator Kamala Harris got 6%. The others come in at 3% or below.
A few interesting notes. Many respondents say their current picks aren’t final choices and that they could be persuaded to support a different candidate in the coming months. How many are feeling flimsy? 63%, which is nothing to laugh at. Put another way, this means that only about one in five respondents are totally set in their choice. There are about five months to go until next year’s first caucus, and people aren’t afraid to weigh their choices this primary season.
Let’s look at how that fares for both Warren and Biden. A quarter of Biden’s supporters are solid in their pick, while 70% say they could be swayed to pick another candidate. For Warren, 88% of respondents say they could shift to another candidate, in contrast to 12% of her supporters who are set on the senator.
Sanders experienced a small drop in this polling, but he’s been pretty consistent in the months leading up to Saturday’s new poll.
Something else to weigh is how many people are considering a candidate, even if it’s as a second or third choice. Warren and Biden continue to lead the pack here; Warren is the candidate under “active” considerations for more voters than anyone else, with Biden following behind. 71% of voters have Warren in active consideration, while 60% are doing the same with Biden. Behind those two, Harris and Buttigieg both clock in at 55%, then Sanders at 50%, then Booker at 42%, then O’Rourke at 38%, then Klobuchar at 37, and finally, Castro at 22%.
“That appears to be a powerful leap forward and suggests that she can improve further, because she’s got these people actively considering her and thinking of her as a second choice,” Selzer said to the Des Moines Register. “She’s got a huge number there. Those people can be converted.”
Favorability also reports in Warren’s favor. 75% of those polled say they view Warren favorably. After her is a switch-up, with Buttigieg coming in at 69%, and behind him, Biden at 66%.
For Warren specifically, she’s had a slow and steady uptick in polls coming out of Iowa. Just a few months ago, in June, she tied with Sanders at 15%. Before that, in March, she was at 9%. Recently, she made national headlines for an enormous crowd—estimated at about 20,000 people—in New York City.
Interested in learning more about Warren? Checking out the Daily Kos Making Progress interview with her below: