Polls Get Even Better for Warren

If Joe Biden was concerned to see Elizabeth Warren pull ahead in a recent poll of Iowa, he might now be shaking in his boots. For the first time, the Massachusetts senator leads the former vice president in Quinnipiac University's nationwide poll, out Wednesday, per Politico. Some 27% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they favor Warren, compared with 25% in favor of Biden, and 16% in favor of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. And though Warren's advantage is well within the margin of error (4.9 percentage points), it shows a huge swing since August, when Biden had a 13-point lead.

Warren is doing as well in the first primary state of New Hampshire, where a Monmouth-USA Today poll of likely Democratic primary voters shows Warren with 27% support, compared to Biden's 25%, per Vox. That lead is also within the margin of error. But the same can't be said of Warren's 9-point lead over Biden in a poll of likely Democratic primary voters in California, where the margin of error is 3 percentage points, per NBC News. Warren is also hot on Biden's tail in South Carolina and Florida, a pollster tells Politico. "Biden has a challenger now," as Ryan Tyson puts it. "He didn't have one before." (More Election 2020 stories.)