Despite leading national Democratic primary polls for more than a year—often by wide margins—former Vice President Joe Biden’s national polling numbers collapsed in the days following his fourth-place finish in the tumultuous Iowa caucuses. He’s not the only perceived frontrunner to falter in recent elections. Biden joins five other candidates since 1988 who lost their national polling lead after the Iowa caucuses; none of the others were able to recover from their decline.
Biden’s path to the nomination seems uncertain. Since Iowa, he has placed fifth in New Hampshire and a distant second in Nevada and now trails Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders by about points nationally. Now he’s banking on a win in South Carolina on Saturday to reverse his downward trajectory before Super Tuesday.
This pattern has become more common in recent years: In five of the seven non-incumbent primary contests since 2004, the polling leader going into Iowa has lost their front-runner status, according to national polling averages compiled by RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight.
Since 1980, the early polling leader in a contested field went on to win the nomination nine times. But no candidate has held a polling lead going into the first nominating contest, lost that lead and then come back to win the nomination. Biden will have to reverse that trend if he’s going to be the Democratic nominee in 2020.
Year | Polling Leader | Nominee | chart |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Clinton | Clinton | |
| 2016 | Trump | Trump | |
| 2012 | Gingrich | Romney | |
| 2008 | Clinton | Obama | |
| 2008 | Giuliani | McCain | |
| 2004 | Dean | Kerry | |
| 2000 | Gore | Gore | |
| 2000 | Bush | Bush | |
| 1996 | Dole | Dole | |
| 1992 | Clinton | Clinton | |
| 1988 | Hart | Dukakis | |
| 1988 | Bush | Bush | |
| 1984 | Mondale | Mondale | |
| 1980 | Reagan | Reagan |