According to recent national polls and state polls aggregated by Real Clear Politics, Sen. Elizabeth Warren seems to be sliding—and fast.
RCP’s average across four polls (Emerson, Economist/YouGov, The Hill/HarrisX, and Politico/Morning Consult) reveals that Warren fell behind Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-VT, in national polling data for the first time since early September.
According to the RCP average, Vice President Joe Biden maintains a commanding lead over his competitors at 29.8 points, while Sanders and Warren trail behind at 19.3 and 18.5, respectively. Sanders has now surpassed Warren as the second-most favored candidate in the Democratic 2020 field, indicating that her less-than-two-month bump may have been short-lived.
On a state level, Warren’s momentum isn’t faring much better. Less than a month ago, she held a comfortable lead in Iowa at 22.7, with her closest competitors being Biden at 17.7 and Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 16.3. But that lead has starkly dissipated. According to latest Iowa polling data, Warren is now trailing Buttigieg at 17.8, and Sanders isn’t far behind at 17.0.
New Hampshire indicates Warren still maintains a lead, but her popularity has vastly diminished since its peak in mid-October at 28.0. She now hovers at 20.7, followed closely by Biden at 19.0. Even this lead is tenuous and unconvincing. New Hampshire polling isn’t particularly helpful for assessing the overall health of Warren’s campaign, given she likely gets a slight boost from being a senator of the state next door, a familiarity component that may be acting as a balm to severity of her decreasing popularity.
While Warren’s numbers are still respectable from an objective standpoint, the trajectory and speed of the drops suggest the Warren campaign may be in hot water. And the decline in popularity is not all that surprising.
As of late, Warren has come across as fiscally irresponsible. She hasn’t yet explained in quantitatively realistic terms how she will pay for her massive “Medicare for All” healthcare plan. She promised to use taxpayer dollars to tear down border walls already erected in some bizarre act of social justice. And that’s just the last few weeks.
She plans to punish the wealthy to finance all these expenditures, to a point that even her 2020 Democratic contender Cory Booker feels goes too far. Big money Democrat donors fear a Warren presidency, one million-dollar donor even requesting for his check to be returned, should Warren win the nomination. As JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon proclaimed, “She vilifies successful people.”
Compare Warren’s decline to the relatively consistent numbers of Sanders, whose national polling average has stayed between 15.3 and 19.3 since May of this year. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Warren’s campaign is beginning to slide.
