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Twice as many voters say former Vice President Joe Biden has a better shot at beating President Donald Trump in the 2020 election than Senator Bernie Sanders in a new poll released after Super Tuesday.
In the latest Reuters/Ipsos survey, released Thursday, 54 percent of registered Democratic voters surveyed nationally picked Biden as the candidate who's most likely to defeat Trump in the general election, compared to just 25 percent that chose Sanders.
Biden also opened up a double digit lead over Sanders, with 45 percent of registered Democratic voters saying they would support the vice president in the party's primary, compared to 32 percent for Sanders.
The poll was conducted between March 4-5, following Super Tuesday but before Senator Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the 2020 race. Its results are dramatically different from the same poll taken less than two weeks ago, which showed Sanders leading Biden by double digits in support from Democratic voters.
Newsweek reached out to staff from the Biden and Sanders campaign for comment.
Biden's campaign experienced a drastic surge after Senator Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg ended their presidential campaigns in the days leading up to Super Tuesday. Klobuchar, Buttigieg and former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke endorsed Biden after dropping out of the race, a move that solidified the former vice president's position as the figure that most moderates will coalesce around.
On Super Tuesday, Biden won the most delegates and took out 10 of the 14 states. In addition to taking the southern states, Biden also unexpectedly won Massachusetts, Minnesota and Maine. The former vice president's resurgence to the top of the field came after a short period where his campaign seemed dead in the water following Sanders' success in the early voting states.
In an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night, Sanders vowed to end his campaign if Biden secures a plurality of pledged delegates ahead of the Democratic convention in July. He asserted that using superdelegates to determine the party's nomination would be a mistake.
"If Biden walks into the convention, or at the end of the process, [and] has more votes than me, he's the winner," Sanders said.
The new Reuters/Ipsos poll was released the same day that Senator Elizabeth Warren ended her presidential campaign after she failed to secure any primary or caucus wins. She declined to endorse any candidates as she announced her decision, saying "Let's take a deep breath and spend a little time on that."
