Last week, I wrote about new national presidential campaign polling numbers that had Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) taking the lead from former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders’ has a 5 percentage point lead, making it a significant shift, considering Biden had led every poll taken on the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates (outside of one where there was a tie) until that point.
This week on the polling front shows more concerning news for Biden, as he’s in a virtual tie now with South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the critical primary state of New Hampshire:
The latest Granite State Poll from the University of New Hampshire finds Sanders at 30 percent, followed by Biden at 18 percent and Buttigieg at 15 percent. No other candidate has more than 5 percent support. Seventy-seven percent of Democrats said they’re still trying to decide who to support.There is surging interest in Buttigieg among Democratic voters.In the previous survey from late February, Sanders was at 26 percent, followed by Biden at 22 percent. Buttigieg was only at 1 percent in that survey.
So not only has Biden lost ground in New Hampshire, but he lost it to a guy with a very minimal campaign apparatus and who almost nobody had heard of up until a month or so ago when the media began to treat him as their new BFF.
“Mini B” Buttigieg, by the way, visited New Hampshire just this past weekend.
Where did Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) land in this poll? In 4th place at 5%.
Sanders clearly has received the benefit of coming from a neighboring state. Warren, however, has not – which should concern her since she has invest so much time and energy in New Hampshire.
This is in addition to the fact that she’s not even polling well in her own state, and has fundraising issues on top of everything else.
There’s also this from that Emerson poll from last week that had Sanders in the lead for the first time:
26% of current Bernie Sanders supporters said that they would rather vote for President Donald Trump over Senator Elizabeth Warren, if that were the eventual 2020 matchup.While many have assumed that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren appeal to a similar progressive voter, many apparent Bernie supporters would seem to disagree. More than one-in-four of them say they would rather vote for Donald Trump’s second term instead of voting for Elizabeth Warren. In the overall head-to-head between Warren and Trump, voters suggest that they would prefer Trump 52% to Warren 48%.
Ouch. No wonder Warren has taken increasingly desperate (and expensive!) measures to try and jump start her flailing campaign. In fact, her longest answer of the night in her Monday CNN town hall from New Hampshire was her explainer on her call for Trump’s impeachment:
She’s going for broke on this one, y’all, whether House Democrats are on board with her or not.
As for Biden, if he does end up officially announcing his campaign for president this week, expect that to give him a temporary uptick in his numbers.
Has New Hampshire historically been a reliable predictor of the eventual Democratic presidential candidate? Here are the numbers from 1976 to 2012:
When you take Sanders’s 2016 primary win into account, that’s 5 out of 9 Democratic nominees they’ve reliably predicted, and only one win on to win the presidency.
That said, Democratic winners of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary naturally try to use their wins as momentum-builders for their campaigns.
The Democratic debates start in late June. Assuming Warren is still in the race at that point (to be fair, it’s still early on in the campaign season), expect her to come out swinging in order to differentiate herself from the ever-expanding list of candidates.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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