Hillary Clinton's lead in the Democratic presidential primary race has grown -- and if Vice President Joe Biden decides to stay out of the race, her numbers would rise even higher, a new CNN/ORC poll shows.
Clinton is backed by 42% of Democratic primary voters nationally, compared to 24% for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 22% for Biden and 1% for former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.
That's a marked improvement over an early September CNN/ORC poll that found Clinton leading Sanders, 37% to 27%, with Biden at 20%.
READ: The complete CNN/ORC poll results
And Biden's support comes almost entirely from Clinton's camp. Without the vice president in the race, Clinton's numbers climb by 15 percentage points, while Sanders' increase by only 4 points -- giving Clinton a nearly 2-to-1 lead at 57% to 28%, with O'Malley moving up to 2%.
The air of inevitability around Hillary irritates a lot of people for whatever reason; it's why the Republicans keep mentioning her as the one to beat. All they needed last time was to have a viable alternative to dethrone her and she lost. After the debates I could see Sanders surging simply because of that.
I think she would make a great President but people really, really enjoy seeing Hillary fail.
