Here are the latest standings among Democratic presidential candidates. (I'll relate these political clichés now to relieve someone of pointing them out later: Yes, it's early in the race, it's only 2019; a lot could happen between now and November 2020; the numbers will dramatically shift as the moneyless drop out; and Joe Biden is old.)
The CNN survey was conducted among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents by SSRS (FiveThirtyEight's rating: A-) just after Biden's announcement last Thursday, so just as obvious as the above, his rather wild upward swing could represent a temporary blip.
Biden 39%
Sanders 15%
Warren 8%
Buttigieg 7%
O’Rourke 6%
Harris 5%
Booker 2%
Gabbard 2%
Klobuchar 2%
Castro 1%
Gillibrand 1%
Inslee 1%
Swalwell 1%
Williamson 1%
Yang 1%
de Blasio <1%
Ryan <1%
Bennet 0%
Delaney 0%
Hickenlooper 0%
Messam 0%
Moulton 0%
From CNN's reporting, which contains the most astonishing results to my thinking, there is this: "That puts Biden more than … roughly 30 points ahead of … Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (8%)." Moreover, excluding Sanders at 15%, the polling results confine Biden's chief competitors (Booker, Harris, O'Rourke, Buttigieg and Warren) to a rather pathetic grouping of 2% to 8%.
Warren, especially, held a blockbuster of a campaign announcement, raised a bundle of cash, and has probably debuted more progressive programs than the others put together. Yet she's stuck at 8%.
If one adds O'Rourke and Buttigieg's numbers to Biden's — the first two aren't particularly strong on the left — it's tempting to conclude that for all the talk of the Democratic Party having careened far leftward, polling suggests that the party has never before been so vigorously moderate. That may be an overstatement. But I doubt it.