Bernie Sanders Already Looking To Brokered 2020 Convention As New Poll Shows Elizabeth Warren Overtaking Him

A new poll released on Wednesday shows Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren surging in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, surpassing Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to occupy second place in the 24-candidate field, according to a summary of the poll by Slate. The site noted that the poll marks the first time that Warren has led Sanders in any national poll “by more than the margin of error.”

The poll, conducted by the research firm YouGov, puts former Vice President Joe Biden well ahead of Warren, however, leading her by 11 percentage points, 27-16, with Sanders garnering only 12 percent support in the poll of registered voters. A poll of all voters taken by YouGov showed the same numbers for Warren and Sanders, but put Biden one point lower, at 26 percent.

Also on Wednesday, a Nevada state poll taken by Monmouth University showed Warren leading Sanders in that state. With Nevada holding caucuses on February 22, that makes it the first “early state” in which Warren, at 19 percent, has surpassed Sanders, who has just 13 percent support in Nevada, according to Monmouth.

Biden remains well out in front in Nevada, however, at 36 percent.

The YouGov poll appears out of line with most other recent polls, which show Biden holding a more significant lead. According to the Real Clear Politics average of all polls, Biden’s lead is more than 15 points over second-place Sanders.

In fact, a Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday placed Biden at 37 percent, 18 points ahead of Sanders and 26 ahead of Warren.

With Biden holding steady and Sanders showing little, if any, positive growth in his overall polling numbers, a top Sanders campaign spokesperson said on Wednesday that Sanders is looking to win the nomination by brokering delegates at the 2020 Democratic Convention to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July of next year, according to a report by Saagar Enjeti of The Hill, via Twitter.

“You definitely have the potential to have a convention where there are multiple candidates with multiple groups of delegates, and there’s a fight at the convention,” Sanders campaign spokesperson David Sirota said in an interview with Hill TV. Sirota added that Sanders would be “in a very, very good position… to win the nomination” through a delegate fight on the convention floor, even if he failed to win through the primary system.

If winning through a brokered convention is indeed Sanders’ strategy, it would not be the first time he has claimed that he could win at a convention rather than by winning the most delegates at the polls. In June of 2016, when Sanders trailed eventual nominee Hillary Clinton by 268 delegates — not including so-called “superdelegates” — and stood no chance of winning the nomination through the primary process, he declared that he would “contest” the nomination at the Democratic Convention that year as well, according to a CNN report.