The changes are small, to be sure. But they’re significant for Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg.
Welcome to Poll Watch from On Politics. Every Friday, we’ll bring you the latest data and analysis to track the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. |
Current state of the race |
Who’s up? Who’s down? Here’s the latest. |
Two small but important shifts have taken place in our polling average over the last week: Bernie Sanders has overtaken Elizabeth Warren to claim second place. And Michael Bloomberg has begun to register in the national polls. |
When we say the shifts are small, it is because they truly are. Mr. Sanders has gained very incrementally, while Mr. Bloomberg has jumped from nowhere to a 4 percent average in national polls. The other leading candidates — Ms. Warren, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg — have held more or less steady. |
Still, these developments look like more than random wobbling in national polls. By overtaking Ms. Warren by even the slightest margin, Mr. Sanders appears to have solidified his political recovery, dispatching the speculation from early in the fall, after his heart attack, that his candidacy might disintegrate altogether. And he appears to be stronger in the early states, vying for first place in Iowa and New Hampshire and seemingly competitive in Nevada, where polling has been sparser. |
By amassing some meaningful support in the national polls so quickly, Mr. Bloomberg has shown the power of his wealth and large-scale advertising. The message he is delivering on television and online has plainly found an audience, even if it is a modest one so far. It may not be a coincidence that Mr. Buttigieg’s rise in national polls leveled off just as Mr. Bloomberg — a mayor with appeal to political moderates — began bombarding the airwaves. |
The overall picture of the race, however, is defined more by continuity than disruption. Mr. Biden remains the leading candidate, still holding about a quarter of the primary vote, neither losing support nor gaining any for months now. But his ability to defend that position during the December and January debates, and then withstand tough challenges in the early primary and caucus states, is a huge question mark. |
It may not be too late for one of the underdog candidates to catch up, but it would likely take a standout finish in Iowa or New Hampshire. There is a lot of buzz about Amy Klobuchar in Iowa at the moment, though she is behind even Mr. Bloomberg in the national polls. She has delivered a series of strong debate performances and could have something to gain if she does so again in Los Angeles next week. |
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Why Warren has lost ground |
 | | Bridget Bennett for The New York Times |
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While she remains a leading candidate, after a grueling autumn, polling averages show that her support has dipped back into the teens nationwide — as well as in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire — and she is working to regain momentum. |
For Ms. Warren, this reflects a historical quirk to her candidacy: She has been fighting a two-flank war unlike any seen by a major Democratic candidate in the modern era. |
To her left, national and early-state polls show Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont holding onto steady support from 15 to 20 percent of Democratic voters, most of them liberals. Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., have been snatching supporters from Ms. Warren across the ideological spectrum. |
This is the first presidential race in the past half-century in which two staunchly left-wing candidates have mounted viable, top-tier candidacies for the Democratic nomination. In many ways, this reflects the state of a party whose rank-and-file members have been moving steadily left since the mid-1990s. Last year, a majority of Democrats identified as liberals for the first time on record, according to Gallup polling. |
“The Democratic electorate has a larger liberal bloc than it ever did,” Sean McElwee, a co-founder of Data for Progress, said in an interview. “The rise in college education has created a much higher concentration of ideological liberalism, in a way that hasn’t existed in the past as a coalition in the Democratic Party.” |
For now, both Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders appear to be fighting for support from many of the same liberal voters — while refusing to attack each other on the campaign trail. But since Mr. Sanders has a seemingly unshakable base of support, Ms. Warren finds herself needing to pick up more moderate voters, many of whom are also considering Mr. Biden and Mr. Buttigieg. |
With voting in Iowa still more than a month away, much remains to be determined: Roughly three in five Democratic primary voters who expressed a candidate preference in a Quinnipiac University national poll released this week said they might still change their minds. Ms. Warren’s support is particularly fluid, with over two-thirds of her supporters saying they were open to supporting someone else. |
Quinnipiac polling shows that Ms. Warren has flagged significantly since October among older voters and those with incomes under $100,000. Mr. Biden has gained among both groups. |
Mr. Biden now commands the support of 22 percent of liberal Democratic voters, roughly even with both Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren, and double his numbers with this group two months ago, according to Quinnipiac’s polling. |
And Mr. Sanders has clipped much of Ms. Warren’s support among younger voters. Among Democratic primary voters under 35, her share dropped by 13 points from October to December, while Mr. Sanders’s rose by 21 points. |
Many Democrats this year say they are driven by an almost single-minded desire to unseat President Trump. Nationwide, it is Mr. Biden who is generally seen as the most capable of doing that, though most of the leading Democratic candidates, including Ms. Warren, come out ahead in potential matchups with Mr. Trump. A Gallup poll last month found that 51 percent of Democrats said they viewed Mr. Biden as the potential nominee with the greatest chance of beating Mr. Trump. Mr. Sanders had 16 percent and Ms. Warren 15 percent. |
Thanks for reading. On Politics is your guide to the political news cycle, delivering clarity from the chaos. |
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