Joe Biden speaks at an event at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds in Davenport, Iowa, June 11, 2019. (Jordan Gale/Reuters)

In the latest Politico/Morning Consult poll out earlier this week, former vice president Joe Biden maintains a healthy advantage over his Democratic competitors in the presidential primary, with 32-percent support among Democratic-primary voters. A distant second place, Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) comes in with 20 percent, and in third is Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren with 16 percent.


Biden stays solidly in the lead when the poll focused solely on Democratic-primary voters only in early primary states, surveying just over 700 such voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Among those voters, Biden also achieved 32-percent support. Sanders remained in second place, but his support inched up to 21 percent, and Warren shifted up to 17 percent. Both Sanders and Warren have gained slightly in the Politico/Morning Consult data since early last month, while Biden has dropped a bit.

A survey from The Economist/YouGov, also out this Wednesday, tells a slightly less optimistic tale for Biden, showing the former vice president with just a four-point lead over Warren. Biden comes in at 26 percent, Warren at 22, and Sanders in a more distant third place with 14. Though he has consistently held the frontrunner position since entering the race in April, at this stage of the race it seems that Biden is largely being buoyed by the fact that the voters looking for an alternative are splitting their support between two progressive candidates.