Bernie Sanders is making his impact felt on the national scene. In a new 2020 Democratic presidential candidate poll released by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, the Vermont Senator jumped an impressive six points to take a slight lead over former Vice President Joe Biden.
It marks the first time that Sanders earned the top spot in the NBC News national poll.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was the only other Democrat to register in double digits with 15 percent, while former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar round out the top five at 7 and 5 percent, respectively.
While it is a positive result for Sanders, his campaign needs to take lessons from the last election cycle and keep his foot on the gas rather than getting too comfortable.
“Four years ago, Republicans thought it was unfathomable at this stage that Donald Trump could be the party’s nominee,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the survey along with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, told NBC News. “The Democrats should not make that mistake. Bernie Sanders is formidable and that’s what we’ve learned in this survey.”
A look at the poll can be seen below:
John Minchillo / @apnews- Bernie Sanders 27%
- Joe Biden 26%
- Elizabeth Warren 15%
- Michael Bloomberg 9%
- Pete Buttigieg 7%
- Amy Klobuchar 5%
- Andrew Yang 4%
- Tom Steyer 2%
- Tulsi Gabbard 2%
- Deval Patrick 1%
- Michael Bennet and John Delaney at less than one percent
The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was conducted between January 26-29, 2020. The margin of error for Democratic primary voters is +/- 4.74 percentage points.
The first vote of primary season comes with the Iowa caucus on February 3. We will have to see how Sanders’ bump on the national scene impacts his place in Iowa where he currently holds a nearly 4-point lead over Biden in the RealClear Politics Average poll.
