Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren close in on Joe Biden after sudden 2020 poll surge

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Joe Biden is losing ground to Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren in the race to become the Democratic presidential candidate, according to a new poll.

Ms Harris is up nine points in the latest CNN/SSRS poll to 17 per cent – leaving her only narrowly behind the former vice president. Mr Biden remains in first place on 22 per cent, but is down 10 points since the equivalent poll in May.

The California congresswoman was widely considered to have won the opening Democratic debates last week, landing blows on Mr Biden over his record of opposition to federally mandated busing, a policy aimed at desegregating US schools.

Ms Warren, who also deemed to have performed well in the TV debates, is up eight points to 15 per cent, pushing Senator Bernie Sanders – down four points – into fourth place in the poll.

Mr Sanders has struggled to distinguish himself as the party’s leading left-wing candidate. Ms Warren promised to scrap student debt before the Vermont veteran announced his own debt cancellation plan.

Support for the other candidates in the crowded field is largely unchanged, with Pete Buttigieg on 4 per cent, Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke on 3 per cent, whilw Amy Klobuchar trails the field on 2 per cent.

The Democratic National Committee requires participants to hit 2 per cent in multiple polls and 130,000 individual donors to qualify for the September debate stage of the party’s contest to determine who goes up against Donald Trump next year.

Mr Buttigieg said earlier this week that he had raised $24.8m (£20m) during the second fundraising quarter, making him his party’s top White House fundraiser for the period.

The impressive haul tops the $18m (£14m) raised last quarter by Bernie Sanders, who previously led the Democratic field in fundraising.

Ms Klobuchar, the senator for Minnesota, tweeted a photo of the five female candidates taken by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue magazine. Congresswomen Tulsi Gabbard and Kirsten Gillibrand were pictured alongside Ms Harris, Ms Warren and Ms Klobuchar.

Ms Harris also announced that her campaign raised more than $2m (31.6m) in donations in the 24 hours after the first presidential debate.

Her fellow Democratic candidates have strongly condemned recent racist attacks made against the California congresswoman on social media.

Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr retweeted and then deleted a post by an alt-right commentator that suggested Ms Harris was unfairly portraying herself as African American.