Former Vice President Joe Biden's allies cite electability as a reason why the early polls that show him leading the Democratic presidential field don’t paint a distorted picture of the race. | Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo 2020 ELECTIONS Biden’s polling lead shaky ahead of 2020 decision New surveys question whether the former vice president is a real front-runner or just has big name-recognition.

Joe Biden’s big lead in early Democratic 2020 polling might be a bunch of malarkey.

While most polls show the former vice president hovering around 30 percent of the Democratic primary vote, well ahead of second-place Sen. Bernie Sanders, two recent surveys paint a starkly different picture — raising the question of whether Biden is a real front-runner or just has big name-recognition. Those polls show far more Democratic voters undecided about which candidate to support, and they pegged Biden’s backing at a much less intimidating 9 to 12 percent.


The results are so varied partly thanks to different methodological choices by the pollsters. But parsing the results is more than an academic exercise: While Biden weighs a third campaign for the presidency, he and his allies must consider whether polls a year before primary season really reflect Biden’s true strength — and his potential rivals have to calculate whether the former vice president could overwhelm lesser-known challengers in 2020.

“These polls are today’s reality,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone. “And sometimes, today’s reality holds until tomorrow and all the way until next year. And other times, today’s reality changes. Primaries are like that.”

Today, the polling signs are that “it’s a very open field,” said Steen Kirby, a campaigns and data specialist with Bold Blue Campaigns, a Democratic firm. “People are weighing their options. I think the reason that so many people are getting in is because this is a 1-to-15 percent spread, not a 1-to-30 percent spread. It’s very different from 2016, when Hillary Clinton was at 40 or 50 percent.”

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Most polls of the 2020 Democratic contest work like this: A telephone interviewer reads a lengthy list of declared and undeclared candidates, or online poll-takers see the whole list on their device. Respondents select from the choices — though some go a different route and volunteer another candidate or say they are undecided.

But critics say that setup forces voters to make a choice they’ve barely considered this early. That makes Biden — and, to a lesser extent, Sanders — an appealing option: Democrats know and almost universally like Biden, even if they haven’t thought a lot about whom they want to take on Trump 21 months from now.

“In a race like this, the methodology stuff really does matter because it’s such an open question,” said Kirby, whose firm recently conducted a national poll of the 2020 Democratic presidential race. Bold Blue’s poll gave respondents an explicit option to say they were undecided — and nearly half, 48 percent, took it.

Biden still led the field, but with only 12 percent support. Sanders was third, with 9 percent, behind Sen. Kamala Harris of California at 11 percent.

Kirby thinks that is a more accurate reflection of the “hard-core” Biden and Sanders support than the 30 or 20 percent, respectively, the two men draw in other polls.

The Bold Blue Campaigns survey isn’t the only poll to show Biden a lot closer to the other Democrats, with a larger share of undecideds. Last month, an ABC News/Washington Post poll asked respondents to volunteer the name of the person for whom they would vote in their state's Democratic primary or caucus.

Biden stilled topped the field, but only at 9 percent. Harris was second at 8 percent, but no other candidate earned 5 percent. A majority of voters didn’t name a candidate or said they were undecided.

Compare those results to other polls that used lists of named candidates: The latest Morning Consult poll shows Biden at 29 percent, Sanders at 22 percent and Harris at 13 percent. A Monmouth University poll last month also had Biden at 29 percent, with Sanders at 16 percent and Harris at 11 percent.

In releasing the poll, Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, sounded a note of caution. “As with any presidential nominating contest at this point in time, voter preferences are driven largely by name recognition,” he said. “It would be very unusual if these results don’t change substantially when we get closer to next year’s primary contests. These early polls are most useful for looking at each candidate’s profile among the party faithful to assess potential viability.”

Whether or not Biden is a strong front-runner or just the nominal leader of a wide-open race, he would bring significant goodwill among Democratic voters if he decides to run. He’s easily the best-known and best-liked candidate: Nearly 4-in-5 Democrats, 78 percent, have a favorable opinion of Biden, greater than any other candidate. Only 2 percent say they’ve never heard of the former vice president.

In addition to vote preference and candidate favorability, some of the early polls also ask Democratic voters what values and attributes are most important to them. In the Monmouth poll, a 56 percent majority said they would rather vote for a Democrat they don’t agree with on most issues who would be stronger against Trump, compared with 33 percent who would choose a candidate they agree with more but would be weaker against Trump in November 2020.

Biden allies cite electability as a reason why the early polls that show him leading don’t paint a distorted picture of the race.

“Their top reason to vote for someone is going to be who can [beat] Trump. In that paradigm, Biden has the broadest level of support,” said Anzalone, who has been linked to a potential Biden campaign. “And that’s why I think that he will retain more of his current support than we’ve seen in previous years, when early poll[-leading] candidates slide.”

That’s all speculation, and horse-race polls this far from an election — let alone a progressive series of 57 elections in different states and territories — aren’t intended to be predictive. But they do matter. Campaigns and prospective campaigns are examining private and public polling for hints about viability and strategy. The Democratic National Committee is using public poll results to determine eligibility for the party’s first primary debates this spring.

The various 2020 Democratic polls “still all tell the same story: that it’s a wide-open race,” said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster. But, Omero cautioned, “We should not be looking at these early polls as signs of what’s going to happen a year from now.”