His rivals are divided, and running out of time to catch up.
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. |
Bernie Sanders is looking more and more like the clear front-runner, as he steadily adds to his support while the rest of the field remains divided. |
Mr. Sanders has the support of nearly three in 10 Democratic voters nationwide — a strong faction, though not an overwhelming plurality. It has become a more convincing advantage, however, in a race in which no other candidate has emerged as a focal point for opposition to Mr. Sanders. Between the rise of Michael Bloomberg and the recent plunge of Joe Biden, there are now four candidates polling in the low- to mid-teens, and no one besides Mr. Sanders with support above 20 percent. |
So far, there is little evidence of a national surge for either Pete Buttigieg, who essentially tied with Mr. Sanders in Iowa and nearly matched him in New Hampshire, or Amy Klobuchar, who became a surprise third-place finisher in New Hampshire. Both have ticked up slightly, but they are still running behind all the other major candidates. |
That picture may or may not hold for long: Our national polling average does not reflect any impact from the most recent debate in Nevada, where Mr. Bloomberg struggled badly and Elizabeth Warren delivered what was seen as her strongest performance of the campaign. And the Nevada caucuses this weekend have the potential to boost Mr. Sanders further. |
Mr. Sanders’s rivals may be running out of time to catch up. If his current advantage persists until the Super Tuesday primaries on March 3, there is a chance he could take a decisive lead in the delegate count. |
Still, there are reasons to believe the race may not be over anytime soon. Scattered polling in the Super Tuesday states has found Mr. Biden fairly resilient in places with large African-American populations, leaving him a plausible path to a comeback. Ms. Klobuchar and Ms. Warren have both reported a huge influx of money after their recent debate victories, suggesting there is still a sizable well of online fund-raising available to candidates besides Mr. Sanders. And of course, money is no object for Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire who is financing his own campaign. |
But Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign is also facing an awkward reality: His candidacy was supposed to be a bulwark against Mr. Sanders, but so far its main effect has been to fragment the moderate wing of the party. To overtake Mr. Sanders, he will need to close hard in the Super Tuesday states, and that almost certainly means performing far better in next week’s South Carolina debate. |
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Looking ahead to Nevada, and beyond |
The Nevada caucuses on Saturday will be the first contest of the Democratic presidential race with a racial makeup that (very roughly) reflects the population of the nation as a whole. |
So while the actual delegate haul is rather small, the results could be read as a preview of what’s to come in the weeks and months ahead. |
Senator Bernie Sanders is favored to win the caucuses — buoyed by his support among young people, Latinos and very liberal voters, a coalition that he hopes will carry him to success across the country. |
A Las Vegas Review-Journal/AARP Nevada poll conducted last week found Mr. Sanders in the lead with 25 percent of the vote, including about three-fifths of voters under 30 and a third of those identifying as very liberal. Mr. Biden was in second place with 18 percent support, and a flock of lower-tier candidates was in a statistical tie for third place: Senator Elizabeth Warren, the hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., all had 10 to 13 percent each. |
If those results bear out on Saturday, it is possible that none of these candidates will feel compelled to end their campaigns any time soon. |
And with Mr. Sanders consolidating the support of his base nationwide and slowly building upon it, maintaining a large and divided field of more moderate candidates through at least Super Tuesday on March 3 could play to his advantage. |
That is particularly true because in most states and districts, candidates need to receive at least 15 percent of the vote in order to be awarded delegates at the Democratic National Convention. |
“If Sanders wins here by a large margin, I think he has a chance to win South Carolina and be in a very strong position going into Super Tuesday,” Jon Ralston, the editor of The Nevada Independent, said in an interview, referring to the South Carolina primary on Feb. 29. “But if he does not, if there’s an upset or if Joe Biden finishes a strong second and stories are written about how he’s the comeback kid, that could change everything.” |
Nevada’s first-ever early voting period ran Saturday through Tuesday, so it was already over by the time the candidates debated in Las Vegas on Wednesday. As a result the fiery onstage exchange may not end up being a decisive factor. According to the Review Journal/AARP poll — taken just before early voting began — roughly three in five Nevadans planned to vote in that window, rather than on caucus day. And sure enough, the Nevada Democratic Party has reported high early turnout (this was the first time Nevada has offered early voting). Officials estimate that roughly 75,000 people participated; that’s nearly equal to the total number of Nevada caucusgoers in 2016. |
It is possible that the results of Nevada’s caucuses won’t be the main headline on Saturday night: That could end up being the caucus process itself, in the event of a fiasco similar to what occurred in Iowa. There were lines and delays at many early-voting sites in Nevada over the weekend; the iPad system that was set up to try to avert an Iowa-like disaster proved slightly cumbersome, according to some reports, though no major hiccups have been reported. |
It remains to be seen whether the caucuses will go off without a hitch, or if final results will prove elusive — as they still are in Iowa. |
“If there’s a huge turnout on caucus day, and it’s 50,000 or 70,000 or 80,000 people, I’m not betting on anything,” Mr. Ralston said. |
In the Review Journal/AARP poll, two-thirds of likely Democratic caucusgoers said they were ready to ditch the caucus process in favor of a more straightforward primary. |
Poll Watch is our weekly look at polling data and survey research on the candidates, voters and issues that will shape the 2020 election. |
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