Biden is Iowa Frontrunner; It Doesn’t Mean Much

Good news for Joe Biden: He’s the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination among voters in all-important Iowa.
 
Bad news: This far before the nominating contest, it means almost nothing.
 
The former vice president has not even officially declared as a candidate for 2020, but he has dropped a number of hints that he is running.
 
An Emerson College poll released Monday shows Biden is the choice of 29 percent of Iowa’s Democratic caucus-goers. That bests Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who gets 18 percent; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is third with 15 percent; and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has the support of 11 percent.
 
Biden also performs best of potential Democratic candidates among general election voters nationwide in hypothetical matchups against President Donald Trump.
 
Biden reportedly has second-guessed his decision to take a pass on the 2016 race in the wake of his son’s death. After scandal-damaged 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton stumbled against Trump, it has become something akin to conventional wisdom that a Biden-led ticket would have been victorious.
 
The results of the poll of Iowa Democrats will only bolster Team Biden, especially since Iowa is the first state to hold a primary or caucus.
 
But history shows polls of caucus-goers at this stage reflect little more than name recognition. An NBC/Marist poll of Iowa Republicans taken in February 2015 conferred frontrunner status on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who had won the Iowa caucuses in 2008. He registered at 17 percent, a percentage point ahead of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and two points ahead of then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
 
By the time the actual voting occurred a year later, Huckabee was a distant ninth. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who won the caucus balloting, garnered just 2 percent in the poll. The runner-up that evening was not even expected to be a candidate and was not included in the Marist poll in 2015. His name? Donald J. Trump.

On the Democratic side, Clinton garnered support from 68 percent of Democratic caucus-goers in the February 2015 survey. That was more than five times the support Biden got, and he didn't even end up running. Clinton did end up winning on caucus night, but she barely edged out Sanders, who was a distant third in the year-before poll.
 
The story was much the same in 2012. Huckabee, who ended up not running, topped an April 2011 Neighborhood Research poll in Iowa with 21 percent of the vote, ahead of Mitt Romney’s 13.5 percent. Interestingly, Trump – who did not run – was third in the hypothetical matchup.
 
The actual caucus winner that year was former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who was an afterthought in the poll.
 
While Huckabee actually did win the 2008 Iowa caucuses, the polls surely did not predict it a year out. In February 2007, a Strategic Vision survey put former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at the head of the Republican field with 25 percent. Romney was second, with 21 percent, followed by John McCain, with 8 percent.
 
By the time the caucus voting rolled around, Giuliani’s standing in Iowa had dropped so precipitously that he did not even contest the caucuses.
 
The same 2007 poll showed former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards leading among Democrats, with 24 percent of the vote. That largely was due to the recognition he built up from a run for vice president four years earlier. Clinton and Barack Obama came in tied with 18 percent.
 
The actual order a year later was flipped. Obama edged out Clinton, while Edwards finished third.
 
It’s better to be high in the polls than low. But Biden would be well-advised not to get too excited. He has, after all, twice sought the Democratic nomination.
 
Neither ended well.