In all the polls, former Vice President Joe Biden leads the other Democratic presidential candidates in every category of voter. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images 2020 elections Biden dominates Dem rivals in new early primary polls The previously unreleased surveys show the former vice president with huge leads in one-on-one matchups with the other top-tier candidates.

Joe Biden is dominating the entire field of Democratic opponents in two key early states, according to new polls that show his lead is even bigger in targeted head-to-head matchups against other high-ranking candidates.

The two polls of likely Democratic primary voters, completed last week by Tel Opinion Research, a Florida-based firm, show the former vice president with a 21-percentage point lead over the second-place candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, in New Hampshire and an even bigger Biden lead over him of 27 points in South Carolina.


Most other candidates polled in the single digits or didn't register at all. Unlike most public polls, respondents were asked an open-ended question about which candidate they preferred, and were not read a full list of the roughly two-dozen Democrats running for the nomination.

But that doesn't mean Biden's big lead is solely a function of name recognition. In head-to-head matchups between the top two vote-getters, Biden’s lead grew to 55 points over Sanders in South Carolina and 44 points in New Hampshire — a state that the neighboring Vermont senator won in his insurgent 2016 bid against Hillary Clinton.

The surveys also showed that Biden’s name ID of nearly 100 percent among likely voters in both states was nearly as high as that of the other candidates, who were recognized by at 8 in 10 voters or more. Biden, however, was better-liked by voters in both state polls.

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Taken together, the results could indicate that Biden might have more staying power in the Democratic primary, even though the race is in its early stages.

“What this shows is Joe Biden has a lot more strength behind his candidacy than just name ID because voters know who the other candidates are, too,” said Ryan Tyson, a Florida-based pollster who typically surveys for Republicans and conducted the poll on behalf of a nonprofit business group called Let’s Preserve the American Dream.

“Biden’s current lead in these surveys is not just because there are so many people in the race,” Tyson said. “He’s not just winning in the open-ballot test with a crowded field of candidates. He’s crushing the others in the head-to-heads.”

In the New Hampshire head-to-head matchups, Biden’s 66 percent to 22 percent lead over Sanders was larger than his 58 percent to 29 percent advantage over Elizabeth Warren, who represents neighboring Massachusetts as a senator.

Biden led Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, 63 percent to 21 percent.

In the South Carolina head-to-heads, Biden leads all three of his main rivals by 52 points or more: 70 percent to 15 percent lead over Sanders, 71 percent to 10 percent advantage over Buttigieg and 67 percent to 15 percent over Warren.

The results of Tel Opinion polls resemble other surveys in the two primary states, but the polling method differs in some cases. Tel Opinion had larger samples than many — 600 in South Carolina and New Hampshire each, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points — and respondents were randomly called off a list of voters who had cast ballots in one of three previous primaries in each state. They were then asked if they said they were likely to vote in next year's primary.

The New Hampshire poll was conducted May 20-22, and the South Carolina poll was conducted May 22-24.

In the open-ended ballot test in South Carolina, Biden received 37 percent support to Sanders’ 10 percent, followed by Warren (8 percent), California Sen. Kamala Harris (7 percent), Buttigieg (3 percent) and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (2 percent), with 32 percent unsure. In New Hampshire, Biden led the field with 33 percent support, to Sanders’ 12 percent and Warren’s 11 percent, followed by Buttigieg (7 percent) and Harris (7 percent) with 28 percent unsure.

These are the first early state primary polls by Tel Opinion, which has polled extensively and successfully in Florida in recent years. Before polling South Carolina and New Hampshire, Tel Opinion surveyed Florida —which has a later primary, on March 17 — and found that Biden had a gargantuan lead in the nation’s largest swing state as well, pulling 39 percent of the vote in the crowded field with Sanders in a distant second at 16 percent.

In all the polls, Biden leads the others in every category of voter: young, middle-aged, old, white, black, male, female, well-educated and less-educated.

Biden’s appeal among African-American voters is particularly strong in South Carolina, where his being the loyal no. 2 to the nation’s first black president appears to be paying dividends. Even though he’s facing two African-American candidates in Harris and Booker, Biden gets 40 percent support from black voters in the open-ended ballot test — slightly more than among all voters.

After polling Florida, heavily white New Hampshire and heavily African-American South Carolina, Tyson said his surveys indicate that something major might have to happen in the race to change the trajectory — starting with the debates next month in Miami.

“Someone is going to have to open up the power tools on Biden at some point, and thus far the ‘tools’ being used through earned media don’t seem to be denting him, at least not yet,” Tyson said. “Are we projecting him as the winner? Hell no. We’re saying the road is long. But Joe Biden might be the person who kills himself off. Something major, some major shift, might have to happen.”