Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren leapfrog Bernie Sanders in 1st major post-debates poll

Biden drops, Harris and Warren jump in new poll — (Image credit: Screenshot/CNN)

The first major poll after last week's inaugural 2020 Democratic presidential debates confirms the conventional wisdom: They were great for Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and bad for former Vice President Joe Biden. The CNN/SSRS poll released Monday evening showed Biden as the top pick of 22 percent of Democrats, down 10 percentage points from CNN's last poll in May; Harris jumped 9 points to 17 percent, and Warren got an 8-point bump, to 15 percent. Previous runner-up Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) dropped 4 points to 14 percent and fourth place.

All other candidates are in the single digits. Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (Texas) lost 2 points, coming in at 3 percent support, while South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg dropped 1 point, to 4 percent. "For those keeping score at home, that's the field's women up 17 points and its men down 17 points," notes Aaron Blake at The Washington Post.

Biden's strongest support in the poll was among black voters (36 percent) and older voters (34 percent), though the one issue Harris beats him on is handling race relations (she got 29 percent to Biden's second-pace 16 percent). A solid 43 percent of Democrats still think Biden is best positioned to beat President Trump, followed by Sanders (13 percent) and Warren and Harris (12 percent). Among all Americans, 56 percent favored a national health insurance plan, even if it raises taxes (85 percent of Democrats agreed), though only 21 percent of Americans favored a national health insurance plan that eliminated private insurance.

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SSRS conducted the poll by phone June 28-30, reaching 1,613 adults. The full sample has a margin of error of ±3 percentage points; the subsample of 656 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents has a margin of error of ±4.7 points.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.