Despite failing to pick up any ground in the polls against Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden — since the former vice president announced his candidacy in April — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders appears to be holding out hope that as the massive pool of 24 candidates in the party’s primary begin to drop out, their support will go to Sanders, allowing him to consolidate an “anti-Biden” vote. But according to a new poll released this week by Echelon Insights , that consolidation vote appears unlikely to happen.
The new poll matched Biden against four of the top Democratic candidates — including Sanders — in head-to-head matchups, eliminating all other candidates. And in fact, rather than seeing his lead shrink as other candidates’ support migrates to Sanders or another leading candidate, Biden’s lead grows considerably more dominating, as FiveThirtyEight reported.
Matched one-on-one with Sanders, according to the Echelon poll, Biden gets 61 percent of the Democratic vote, compared to only 25 perfect for Sanders — which puts Biden ahead 36 points.
In three other head-to-head matchups polled by the firm, Biden defeats California Sen. Kamala Harris by an overwhelming margin of 63-20, while he does even better against Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren with a 66-19 victory. President Barack Obama’s former VP also crushes South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, according to Echelon , by 48 points, 65-17.
“These numbers suggest there is not much of an anti-Biden vote a rival candidate could work to consolidate,” wrote Vox political analyst Eric Kleefeld, adding that the poll also showed that supporters of other “progressive” candidates — such as Warren or Harris — may not simply join forces with self-described “Democratic Socialist” Sanders due to their similar ideologies.
Instead, those left-leaning voters “may well pitch in with Biden himself,” Kleefeld wrote in his analysis of the Echelon poll.
The one possible caveat for Biden, as Kleefeld noted, is that the percentage of voters who said that they would “definitely” vote for him was significantly lower than his overall total. In one-on-one poll against Sanders, only 39 percent said they would “definitely” vote for Biden, while another 22 percent said they would “probably” vote for the former vice-president.
However, those numbers would not help Sanders much, according to the poll, because only 14 percent said they would “definitely” vote for him, with another 10 percent “probably” casting ballots for Sanders. The poll showed 14 percent “unsure,” but even if all 14 percent voted for Sanders, Biden would still win that head-to-head matchup by an overwhelming 22 points, according to the Echelon poll.
