Joe Biden holds big lead in national poll

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a substantial national lead over his opponents in the Democratic presidential campaign, buoyed by support among voters whose top priority is to beat President Donald Trump, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

The nationwide poll comes just days before the first votes of the 2020 nominating contest are cast in the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses, and many voters are agonizing over which candidate would be best equipped to beat Trump.

Even as polls in Iowa and other early voting states, as well as California, show a much closer race in those places, where Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has gained ground, Biden’s support among black voters and people who want a candidate who can beat Trump have kept him in the lead nationwide, the new poll finds.

Backing from those groups, which significantly overlap, could help Biden weather political storms if he has a weak showing in Iowa on Monday and, a week later, in the New Hampshire primary, where polls show the former vice president also faces stiff competition.

“If he could win Iowa, he would have a pretty good path to the nomination,” said Bob Shrum, director of the Center for the Political Future at USC, which sponsored the poll. “But if he loses Iowa or performs poorly there, will these (national) numbers change, or are they a firewall?”

The new poll, however, also backs up a key argument made by Biden’s top rivals — that he is not the only one who could beat Trump. The survey found that Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also outpolled Trump in hypothetical head-tohead matchups, although by narrower margins than Biden.

Biden’s electability argument is not faring so well in delegate-rich California, where the Democratic electorate is especially liberal. A new UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies poll for the Los Angeles Times put Sanders in the lead, backed by 26% of people likely to vote in the state’s March 6 Democratic primary, followed by Warren with 20% and Biden trailing with 15%.

Overall, the nationwide poll finds the top-tier candidates aligning in much the way they did when USC last polled in October. Among likely Democratic primary voters, 34% say they support or are leaning toward Biden. Sanders and Warren are essentially tied, with 18% and 16%, respectively; Pete Buttigieg trails with 9%; Amy Klobuchar gets 3%.

The biggest change in the candidate lineup comes in the emergence of Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and former New York mayor, who in November made a late entrance into the race. He has already caught up to Buttigieg, the poll found, drawing support from 9% of likely Democratic primary voters. Like Biden, his strongest selling point is his perceived electability: 24% of Bloomberg’s voters say they chose him because they believe he could beat Trump. Half as many said they picked him because he shares their values.