Biden, Sanders neck-and-neck in new 2020 Democratic race poll

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Polling: Biden support grows, Warren's numbers tank

John Sununu, former New Hampshire Governor, weighs on new polling that shows Elizabeth Warren has fallen behind Bernie Sanders while Biden still leads

With three days until the next scheduled Democratic presidential nomination debate, a new national poll indicates former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont are leading the rest of the still large field of White House hopefuls.

Biden – who has remained at the top of nearly every national poll since even before he declared his candidacy in late April -- stands at 24 percent among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters in a NPR/PBSNewsHour/Marist poll released Monday.

Sanders, the populist senator from Vermont who is making his second straight run for the Democratic nomination, is at 22 percent. Biden’s slight 2-point edge is within the survey’s sampling error.

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Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren – another top-tier contender who has seen her poll numbers slip the past two months -- stands at 17 percent in the poll. And South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg – a onetime long-shot who’s soared in recent months in surveys in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire – registers at 13 percent support.

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According to the poll, tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang is at 5 percent, with Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg each at 4 percent. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, and former Obama housing secretary and former San Antonio, Texas Mayor Julian Castro stand at 1 percent. Every other candidate else registered at less than 1 percent.

The poll indicates that with a month and a half to go until the Iowa caucuses kick off the presidential nominating calendar, just over three-quarters of those questioned said they could change their minds on who they are currently supporting.

Marist Institute for Public Opinion director Lee Miringoff – who conducted the poll – noted that even though Biden’s consistently led the national polls, there’s been plenty of fluidity in the crucial early-state surveys.

"I think we're looking at the last surge" for who could win, Miringoff said.

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The NPR/PBSNewsHour/Marist poll was released a day after a new national Fox News Poll indicated Biden at 30 percent in the Democratic nomination race, with Sanders at 20 percent and Warren in third at 13 percent. Buttigieg registered at 7 percent, with Klobuchar and Bloomberg each at 5 percent and everyone else at 3 percent or less.

While Biden and Sanders' numbers were basically unchanged from the previous Fox News survey – which was conducted at the end of October – Warren dropped 8 percentage points.

The NPR/PBSNewsHour/Marist poll was conducted Dec 9-11, with 1,508 registered voters nationwide, including 704 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, questioned by live telephone operators. The margin of error for questions on the Democratic presidential primary is plus or minus 5.4 percentage points.