Emerson national poll delivers surprises

Beto O’Rourke — illustration by Jordan Sellergren

On April 15th, a new national Emerson Poll (who FiveThirtyEight gives a B+) was released on the 2020 Democratic Primary race and it gave a few surprises.



In the head to head ballot test where 2020 Democratic Primary candidates are pitted against President Trump, only three polled well enough to potentially show them beating Trump. Respondents chose Biden and Sanders to beat Trump as has been standard. The only other candidate that appeared to be able to beat Trump was Texas’ Beto O’Rourke. No other candidate exceeded a tie in this part of the poll:



Biden 53%, Trump 47%

Sanders 51%, Trump 48%

O’Rourke 51%, Trump 49%

Harris 50%, Trump 50%

Buttigieg 49%, Trump 51%

Warren 48%, Trump 52%



Besides O’Rourke’s score in that poll, there were other surprises in the poll: Bernie Sanders edged out Joe Biden for the first time this year in the 2020 Democratic Primary section of the poll:



Senator Bernie Sanders — 29%

former Vice President Joe Biden — 24%

Mayor Pete Buttigieg — 9%

former Rep. Beto O’Rourke -8 %

Senator Kamala Harris — 8%

Senator Elizabeth Warren — 7%

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang — 3%

former HUD secretary Julian Castro — 3%



The poll was conducted April 11–14 of Democratic Primary voters with a subset of n=356, +/- 5.2%.