Former Vice President Joe Biden does not appear in any rush to decide whether he will run for president again in 2020, in large part because he is a presumed front-runner. Biden, after all, has the sort of name recognition that another Democratic primary candidate would have to spend years of campaigning and millions of dollars to achieve. Uncle Joe, despite his gaffes and age, is a known quantity with legacy status. At a time when Democratic voters are desperate for someone, anyone to beat Donald Trump, Biden’s familiarity may be a comfort. As he surveils an increasingly crowded primary landscape, Biden is presumably comforted, himself, by two recent polls in which he leads the field with roughly 30 percent.

But as Politico notes, polls can be deceiving, especially this early in the race. When polling firm Bold Blue gave respondents the option to remain undecided, 48 percent took it. As a result, Biden ended up with only 12 percent support. Right behind him: California Senator Kamala Harris, with 11 percent. When an ABC News-Washington Post survey asked respondents to volunteer a name for the primary, Biden led the field with just 9 percent. Harris came in second again, with 8 percent.

Those numbers might give Biden pause as he considers his evolving political calculus. (Sources close to Biden recently said he is “95 percent” ready to make his decision.) For someone who entered the national arena only two years ago, Harris has had an impressive trajectory since officially launching her presidential campaign in Oakland last month, placing her well ahead of high-profile rivals like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker in the eyes of many Democratic strategists. Harris famously brought in $1.5 million to her campaign PAC just 24 hours after she announced her run, thanks to a digital fund-raising strategy that one operative described as “overkill,” but resulted in amazing press. In an era when Democratic politics are drifting further to the left, and primary voters care more than ever about identity, Harris—young, black, progressive—looks like the future. Biden may have greater appeal to swing voters, but he also looks and sounds like the party’s past.

Harris may benefit from other electoral assets, too. Traditionally, Iowa and New Hampshire had outsize importance in the Democratic primary, elevating candidates who can appeal to Midwestern whites and independent-minded New Englanders, respectively. Now that California has bumped up its primary date to Super Tuesday, Harris may have a huge, 475-delegate hometown advantage. “Our strategy runs straight through California, and we plan to aggressively defend our home-state turf from donors to political leadership to super-delegates to organizations and their underlying memberships,” senior strategist Sean Clegg recently told Politico. “We believe the early primary, early voting, and the cost of communicating will make it virtually impossible for all but the top two or three candidates to play in the state in a meaningful way.”

Polling numbers, obviously, don’t necessarily translate into long-term successes. But already, a potential Biden-Harris face-off looks like a microcosm of the debate that will likely run through the entire Democratic primary. Do Democrats win by nominating somebody fresher or more familiar? Biden and Harris clearly have their partisan diehards, but if the numbers from Bold Blue indicate anything, it’s that the two still have to make their case to nearly half the country—and there’s no telling if that half might ultimately prefer somebody else entirely.

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