The 2020 presidential election may be two years away, but potential candidates to take on Donald Trump are already being considered, and recent polling suggests that the top choice for progressives is Senator Bernie Sanders.
According to straw polls by the progressive political action committee Democracy for America reported on by Politico, the independent lawmaker from Vermont is so far leading the 2020 field with 36 percent support. Sanders was followed by former Vice President Joe Biden and Texas Representative Beto O'Rourke.
Sanders, who comfortably won his re-election bid for Senate in November's midterms, has not formally declared his intention to run for president. He told reporters last week that he would "make that decision when I think it's appropriate."
"If, and that is an if, I do decide to run, we're going to be taking on the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry, and Wall Street," Sanders told NBC News. "And all of the powerful special interests who now control much of what goes in Congress."
Sanders, 77, squared off against Hillary Clinton in 2016 but missed out on the Democratic nomination. Yet his campaign, which refused corporate-PAC money and was largely funded by small political donations, galvanized support from the left and from young progressive voters. At the peak of his unsuccessful bid, Quinnipiac polling showed that Sanders had managed to close the gap between him and Clinton to just a handful of percentage points.
Second to Sanders in Democracy for America polling was Biden, who intended to run for president in 2016 but decided against it after the death of his son, Beau, following a long battle with brain cancer. The former vice president and Delaware senator garnered 15 percent support, according to the survey.
In an exchange with The Intercept this month, Biden said that he thinks "anybody" can beat President Trump in the upcoming election. He has also told reporters that he is the "most qualified person in the country to be president."
Trailing both Sanders and Biden is O'Rourke, whose surprisingly close Senate race against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz this midterm election cycle launched him into the national spotlight. O'Rourke ultimately lost his bid for Congress, but he has since met with Barack Obama and received endorsements from some of the former president's 2008 advisers.
O'Rourke first sparked speculation that he would launch a 2020 bid after he wrote a Medium blog post describing a literal run through Washington D.C. According to the straw polling by Democracy for America, O'Rourke has about 12 percent support.
But even with Sanders in the top spot, the polling shows that no one candidate has a strong lead in the Democratic primary field.
"These results make clear that, while Bernie Sanders has a strong early lead, no single potential presidential candidate has full command of the Democratic Party's progressive base heading into 2019," Democracy for America's incoming chief executive, Yvette Simpson, said in a statement to Politico.
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Alexandra Hutzler is currently a staff writer on Newsweek's politics team. Prior to joining Newsweek in summer 2018, she was ... Read more
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