The Democratic Primary Isn’t Just a Contest Between Biden and Sanders

According to the polling average at RealClearPolitics, this is where things stand for the top seven Democratic primary candidates nationally.

Biden: 32 percent
Sanders: 15 percent
Warren: 12 percent
Buttigieg: 7 percent
Harris: 7 percent
O’Rourke: 4 percent
Booker: 2 percent

But that doesn’t tell the whole story, as I’ve been saying for quite a while now. A recent poll by Data for Progress asked respondents to name their most preferred candidates, up to a maximum of five, and their least preferred candidates, up to a maximum of five. Here is what they found.

Of the candidates in the top seven, the current leaders—Sanders and Biden—were also named in the bottom five most often. When the percent of people who listed a candidate in their bottom five is subtracted from the percent who placed them in the top five, the order of the top seven is shuffled a bit.

That is what leads to one of the topline findings from this poll: “Democratic primary voters are considering many candidates.”