Sen. Kamala Harris' polling surge continued Tuesday, as a new poll of Iowa caucus-goers shows her in second place in the crucial early state.
Harris only trails former Vice President Joe Biden, whom she confronted in the pivotal moment of last week's first Democratic primary debate, according to the USA Today/Suffolk University poll in Iowa.
Biden has 24 percent to Harris’ 16 percent. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is in third at 13 percent, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 9 percent. South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is at 6 percent, and Sens.
Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker are each at 2 percent, the last candidates above that mark.This is the second poll this week that has shown a bump for Harris. A national CNN/SRSS poll released Monday also had Harris in second place, bunched with Warren and Sanders — and trailing only Biden.
This is the first poll that Suffolk University/USA Today has released in Iowa this cycle.
However, in a CBS News/YouGov poll in the state taken before the debates, Harris was in the middle of the pack.
This newly-released USA Today/Suffolk poll is a qualifying poll for the primary debates, according to the Democratic National Committee. With two weeks to go until the July 16 deadline to meet the DNC's criteria for the second debate, later this month in Detroit, the number of qualified candidates remains at 21 — the same 20 who debated last week, plus Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. But the DNC says it will use tiebreaker procedures to keep the field at 20 candidates.
For the third debate in September, candidates much reach 2 percent in four polls released between June 28 and August 28, in addition to receiving donations from 130,000 Americans. The USA Today/Suffolk poll is the second qualifying poll for the third debate, and six candidates have now received 2 percent in both: Biden, Harris, Warren, Sanders, Klobuchar and Buttigieg.
Booker may have also picked up a second qualifying poll for the September debate, receiving a rounded 2 percent in the USA Today/Suffolk poll, though the DNC has not clarified whether it will count the 1.8 percent Suffolk reported as Booker's vote share as reaching 2 percent. (Most pollsters round their results to the nearest whole percentage point, as does USA Today, the DNC-approved media sponsor for this survey.)The Suffolk University/USA Today poll surveyed 500 likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers from June 28-July 1. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine