Monmouth University early Wednesday morning announced that its newest poll showing 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful and former vice president Joe Biden plunging in voter support was merely an “outlier.”
The poll released on Monday showed Biden dropping 13 percentage points from 32% in June, falling to 19% and trailing both Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who tied at 20%.
The polling data heightened concerns about Biden’s electability among his competitors.
Ironically, amid these heightened concerns, Monmouth University Poll issued a statement throwing its own polling under the bus:
“As other national polls of 2020 Democratic presidential race have been released this week, it is clear that the Monmouth University Poll published Monday is an outlier,” poll director Patrick Murray said. “This is a product of the uncertainty that is inherent in the polling process.”
He went on to say that the poll fell “outside the standard margin or error” and that this “occurs very infrequently, but every pollster who has been in this business a while recognizes that outliers happen.”
When the poll made headlines, the Biden campaign slammed it as “an outlier that is contradicted by every measure of the national average."
But this isn’t the first time his candidacy has been questioned, whether it be in light of Biden's repeated gaffes, feelings that he was not liberal enough or as leftist as his opponents, or a general lack of excitement among voters. If anything, it simply confirmed that those fears were prominent.
Murray, before renouncing the poll altogether, said that the main takeaway was that "the Democratic race has become volatile."