Barack Obama's former vice-president, Joe Biden, has emerged as one of the favourites to challenge Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Biden topped a poll of Democratic voters in Iowa on Saturday, 2% ahead of Bernie Sanders in second place.
A number of leading Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusets and Cory Brooker of New Jersey, have announced their intention to run but many party supporters are believed to favour a Biden presidential challenge.
He reluctantly stood aside in 2016 so Hillary Clinton could run and has reportedly regretted his decision. However, at 76 years of age, he may feel his time to run the country has passed.
“If I’m Joe Biden sitting on the fence and I see this poll, this might make me want to jump in,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of the Des Moines-based polling company Selzer & Co. https://t.co/pUIxOkKu1L
— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) March 10, 2019
Another leading candidate, Beto O'Rourke of Texas has yet to announce whether he will enter the race on this occasion. The former three term congressman failed in his unlikely bid to unseat Ted Cruz in the recent senate race. Texas hasn't elected a democrat to a statewide seat since 1994.
However, he pushed Cruz all the way, with the incumbent needing a rally headlined by US President Donald Trump, to get him over the line.
Remarkably, O'Rourke's campaign was entirely funded by donations from supporters and he refused to accept any money from political action committees. In all, he raised an astonishing $38 million in three months leading up to the vote.
A Biden-O'Rourke ticket in 2020 could prove very popular with US voters across the political spectrum as Democrats seek to unseat Donald Trump.
Democrats wrestled control back from Republicans of the House of Representatives in the 2018 mid-term elections for the first time in 8 years in what was viewed as a major rebuke to the policies of the Trump administration.
They failed to win a majority in the Senate but were defending 26 of the 35 seats contested. The Senate map will be far more favourable in 2020 when the GOP will have to defend 22 seats in the chamber.
