On Wednesday afternoon, Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announced that she has dropped out of the 2020 presidential race.
“Today, I am ending my campaign for president,” Gillibrand said in an announcement posted on Twitter and first reported by The New York Times. “I am so proud of this team and all we’ve accomplished. But I think it’s important to know how you can best serve. To our supporters: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Now, let’s go beat Donald Trump and win back the Senate.”
“I wanted you to hear it from me first, that after more than eight incredible months, I’m ending my presidential campaign,” the senator says in the video announcement. “I know this isn’t the result we wanted. We wanted to win this race. But it’s important to know when it’s not your time, and to know how to best serve your community and country. I believe I can best serve by helping to unite us to beat Donald Trump in 2020.”
Gillibrand’s decision to drop out of the race comes amid a series of polls showing her trailing far behind the front-runners, failing to earn above 1% of the Democratic vote in many recent primary surveys.
A Quinnipiac national poll released Wednesday shows former Vice President Joe Biden as the clear front-runner, earning 32% of the Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent vote; Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren took 19% of the vote, while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders came in third with 15% of the vote. Sen. Kamala Harris was forth with 7%, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg fifth with 5%, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang sixth with 3%. No other candidate, including Gillibrand, earned more than 1%.
A USA Today/Suffolk poll published Wednesday likewise found Gillibrand failing to earn even 1% of the Democratic vote. Similar to the Quinnipiac poll, Biden topped the poll with 32% of the vote, Warren was in second with 14%, and Sanders was third, earning 12%. Buttigieg and Harris were tied for fourth at 6%.
An Economist/YouGov poll released Wednesday gave Gillibrand just 1%. Like most of the other polls, YouGov found Biden in the lead, but a less sizable one, with 24%; Warren was again second with 20%, and Sanders came in third at 14%. Harris and Buttigieg were again fourth and fifth, with 8% and 5% respectively.
Related: Pollster: Don’t Pay Too Much Attention To Our Big Democratic Primary Poll