Bernie Sanders is back in the lead of the Democratic primary pack, a new poll shows.
A national poll conducted by Reuters /Ipsos found that the Vermont Senator has the support of 19 percent of voters, tying former Vice President Joe Biden for the lead and 6 percentage points ahead of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who had surpassed Sanders in a number of other recent national polls.
The poll could be even more important for Sanders given the uncertainty that followed his recent heart attack. Sanders had to take several days off the campaign trail in the wake of the health scare, and some pundits expressed worry that the incident could cause worry for voters.
But Sanders has since returned to the campaign trail and said in an interview with WHO-TV that the health scare only underscored for him the importance of passing Medicare for All .
“If anything, that incident has motivated me even more,” he said.
There were other positives for Sanders in the poll. The results showed that he and the other frontrunners may not face a serious challenge from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has considered entering the race. Bloomberg polled at just 3 percent, leading Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, to determine that it would be a very difficult path for him to the nomination.
“Michael Bloomberg may have a path to the nomination, but it’s beyond my imagination to see what that path is,” Kondik said.
The latest poll also shows a gradual comeback for Sanders after reaching what was his lowest point in polling since officially entering the race. An aggregate of polls from Real Clear Politics showed that Sanders had a dip after his heart attack, but since then has been picking up ground on both Biden and Warren, who had passed him for second place back in September. With less than two months until the voting begins, the race has grown considerably tighter and Sanders has reasserted his place as a frontrunner.
Sanders has also been at or near the top of polls in a series of key early voting states, including New Hampshire where he had scored a strong victory in the 2016 Democratic primary that helped give fuel to his long-shot bid to defeat Hillary Clinton for the party’s nomination. Sanders is again strong in his neighboring state and was in second place in Iowa , the first state to vote in the 2020 Democratic primary.