The early favorite to win the New Hampshire primary hasn't even declared his intention to run for president, according to a new UMass Amherst poll that showed U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren running fourth in the Granite State.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is is still weighing a possible campaign for president, led a field of 10 declared and potential candidates in New Hampshire with 28 percent support in the new UMass poll, followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who declared his campaign Tuesday, at 20 percent.
The Delaware Democrat's strength was fueled, in part, buy the fact that voters gave him the best odds of any candidate to beat President Donald Trump, which was the most important criteria among voters surveyed for choosing a candidate to back.
California Sen. Kamala Harris polled in third place with 14 percent, followed by Warren with 9 percent, former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke at 6 percent and U.S. Sens. Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand at 3 percent. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Housing Secretary Julian Castro and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar all came in at 2 percent or less.
Those numbers include likely voters who are "leaning" in the direction of a candidate, while 9 percent said they didn't know who they would support if the vote were held today. Warren was also among the most polarizing candidate in the field with 26 percent of voters saying they would not vote for her if she became the party's nominee, the highest negative the field.
"With a roster full of fresh, young faces vying to be the Democratic Party's nominee, New Hampshire's Democratic primary voters seem more comfortable handing the reins to a seasoned veteran," Tatishe Nteta, associate professor of political science and director of the UMass Poll, said in a statement.
The UMass poll surveyed 337 likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters, including registered Democrats and independents, who were interviewed between Feb. 7 and Feb. 15, before Sanders officially announced his campaign. It had a margin of error of 6.8 percent, making the result somewhat fluid in such a large field.
The order of the candidates, however, closely mirrored a broader survey released this week by Morning Consult that found Biden (30 percent), Sanders (21 percent), Harris (11 percent) and Warren (8 percent) holding the top four positions in the early Democratic primary field nationally.
In a more tailored survey of voters in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, Warren jumped ahead of Harris with 11 percent to the California Democrat's 10 percent. Both women, however, still trailed Biden (33 percent) and Sanders (22 percent) in those states.
UMass Amherst Associate Professor Jesse Rhodes, who is also the associate director of the UMass Poll, said voters' familiarty with Biden gives him an early advantage in polls over candidates like Harris and O'Rourke, if he runs. "It also gives him an advantage over other more familiar candidates like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, who many Democrats might like on the issues but fear is too liberal to win in a head-to-head contest with Trump," Rhodes said.
While there is still a year before New Hamphire voters will cast their ballots, many pundits already see the state as a must-win for Warren who will need to demonstrate strength in the state that borders Massachusetts if she hopes to convince voters that she has what it takes to compete nationally and beat Trump.
She will have competition, however, from fellow New Englander Sanders for home-field advantage, and the two senators early on have carved out similar ideological lanes campaigning against an economic system that they say favors big corporations and leaves the middle class falling behind. Sanders announced Tuesday that he had raised an eye-popping $5.9 million in donations in the first 24 hours since his announcement, showcasing the strength of a political network he built during his upstart 2016 campaign.
Meanwhile, Warren on Tuesday was promoting her plan for universal, affordable child care that she said she would pay for with her proposed "ultra millionaire" tax on the very wealthy.
Already having visited New Hampshire multiple times since opening an exploratory committee on New Year's Eve and announcing her campaign on Feb. 9 in Lawrence, Warren will be back in New Hampshire on Friday night to deliver the keynote address at the New Hampshire Democratic Party's annual McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner.
Eighty-two percent of likely voters in the UMass poll said there was a chance they would vote for someone else.
Harris led the field as voters' second choice pick with 28 percent, followed by Biden at 26 percent, Booker at 24 percent, Warren at 22 percent, Sanders at 21 percent and O'Rourke at 20 percent.
The most important quality in a candidate to New Hampshire voters, UMass pollsters found, is their chance of beating Trump in the general election. Thirty-three percent said they are most likely to pick a candidate based on their perceived ability to beat Trump, followed by 22 percent who said they want a candidate who is honest and trustworthy and 20 percent who are looking for someone who shares their views on the issues.
Twenty-six percent of Democrats and independents polled said that they would not vote for Warren if she were the nominee, followed by Bloomberg at 23 percent and Sanders at 21 percent.
