Biden’s Lead Shrinks as Warren, Harris Rise in Post-Debate Poll

(Bloomberg) -- Former Vice President Joe Biden's lead in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination has shrunk by 10 percentage points in a CNN poll conducted since last week's debates that showed Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren getting significant bumps in support.

The poll of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents found Biden drew support from 22%, compared with 32% a month ago, while Harris and Warren, who both delivered strong performances in the debate, drew 17% and 15% respectively. Bernie Sanders had support of 14% of the Democrats surveyed, which is a 4 percentage point drop from the last CNN poll.

No other candidate got more than 5% support and the other Democratic hopefuls did not see a significant change after the two night of debates last week, the poll found.

Among those who followed news coverage of the debates, 41% said Harris did the best job, 13% said Warren was the standout, and 10% singled out Biden. Among those who said they watched at least one night of the debates, 46% said Harris did the best, 19% Warren, and 8% said Biden.

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The debates featured 10 candidates each night. Warren appeared on the first night while Biden, Harris and Sanders were on stage for the second debate. Harris put Biden on the defensive when she confronted him his stance in opposition of busing to integrate schools.

The network surveyed 656 Democrats June 28-30 as part of a larger poll of voters in both parties. The Democratic portion of the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, John Harney

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