A nationwide Fox News poll released Sunday shows President Donald Trump trailing former vice president Joe Biden and no fewer than four other Democratic contenders as early campaigning for the 2020 election begins to gain steam. A separate survey of battleground states, by CBS, shows Democrats strongly favor Biden as the candidate most likely to beat Trump in next year's elections.
The Fox poll showed Biden leading Trump by 49 percent to 39 percent among all registered voters nationwide, while Senator Bernie Sanders held nearly the same advantage over the president, at 49 percent to 40 percent. Holding edges of 1 or 2 points over Trump - albeit within the poll's 3-point margin of error - were Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana.
The polling comes more than 500 days before the November 3, 2020 election, an eternity in the political world. One widely viewed tweet this week shows five presidential candidates in recent decades who trailed at this point in their campaigns - including Trump - but who went on to win. The president does not officially launch his re-election campaign until Tuesday, at a rally-style event in a huge arena in Orlando, Florida.
Still, the Fox poll, conducted June 9 to June 12, is seen as heartening by Democrats eager to chip away at Trump's popularity, particularly in key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump's campaign recently dismissed leaked data from its own pollsters showing Biden with double-digit leads in battleground states. The campaign at first denied the data, but then acknowledged it, branding it as "ancient" because it dated from March.
But the new CBS poll confirms a clear Biden lead in battleground states among Democratic voters, as the crowded race for that party's nomination begins to take shape. A belief among Democratic voters that Biden is best positioned to defeat Trump in 2020 was cited by three-quarters of Democrats as a decisive factor in their support.
The CBS News/YouGov Battleground Tracker survey, conducted May 31 to June 12, said Biden had the backing of 31 percent of Democratic primary voters in 18 key early-voting states. Biden was trailed by senators Elizabeth Warren (17 percent), Sanders (16 percent) and Kamala Harris (10 percent). The poll, with a 1.5 percent margin of error, looked at states including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina - which hold primary elections in February, at the top of the electoral calendar - as well as states in the upper Midwest, where Trump eked out narrow but decisive victories in 2016.
Elizabeth Warren has been steadily rising in the polls, only recently reaching statistical equivalency with Sanders, whose support has been slipping. Sanders acknowledged on Sunday that "polls go up and polls go down" but insisted that the survey showed he was the strongest candidate to defeat Trump.