Support for Joe Biden’s presidential bid has dropped by a third after he was repeatedly challenged in the first debate between Democrats seeking the party nomination for the next US election, according to two polls. The proportion of Democrats who said they would back Mr Biden, the former US vice president, to be their party’s candidate in 2020 dropped from 32 per cent in May to 22 per cent according to a CNN poll. That was mirrored by a surge in support for Kamala Harris, the Californian senator who confronted Mr Biden over his race record at the debate. She has now moved into second place according to the poll. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator who was also widely seen to have performed well in the first debates in Miami last week also substantially increased her support. Another poll released on Tuesday by Quinnipiac University showed similar movement, with Mr Biden dropping from 30 per cent support before the debate to 22 per cent and Ms Harris rising to second place on 20 per cent. Polling experts urge caution at over-analysing results, with surges in support after campaign debates often not lasting long and repeated surveys needed to establish a trend. However the sharp change suggests that Mr Biden, who has enjoyed a substantial lead on all rivals to the Democratic nomination over the last two years, is being pegged back. Around 650 Democrat voters or independents leaning that way were asked in the CNN poll to say which candidate they would most likely support for the nomination, with the names being listed randomly. Mr Biden came top with 22 per cent of those asked backing him. He was followed by Ms Harris on 17 per cent, Ms Warren on 15 per cent and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders on 14 per cent. The second night of the Miami debate saw Ms Harris, whose mother is Indian and father is Jamaican, challenge Mr Biden over his historic positions on civil rights issues. Their clash was the stand-out moment of the debates and was repeated often on US cable news channels in the following days. In a separate development, Hunter Biden, Mr Biden’s son, has opened up about his struggles with addiction in an interview with The New Yorker magazine, including his use of alcohol and cocaine. The younger Mr Biden said: “Everybody has trauma. There’s addiction in every family. I was in that darkness. I was in that tunnel – it’s a never-ending tunnel. You don’t get rid of it. You figure out how to deal with it.”
