I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep this up as a daily feature, but I’ll certainly try.
Full disclosure: I will be supporting Hillary Clinton in the primaries. There may be some of that slant in the coverage of the numbers. That said, I will not be cherry picking the polls I choose to include or unskewing anything.
The Big News:
New polls in the first four contests paint a hopeful picture for the Clinton campaign.
Morning Consult, on behalf of the Campaign for Sustainable RX Pricing, ran polls in each of the four February contests and found uniformly good news for Clinton. There was also a FOX News poll of New Hampshire that is quite interesting.
IOWA
Clinton 55
Sanders 37
O’Malley 2
Iowa, once seen as a close race, seems to be moving heavily in Clinton’s favor. On RCP, the race stands at 54-30, a huge change from the 37-37 tie in mid September, and does not yet include this poll. Winning Iowa by a large margin would be a strong vindication for Clinton after her disappointing third place finish in 2008, and denying Sanders a win here would be a major blow to his campaign plan to build momentum in the earliest races.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Clinton 48
Sanders 44
O’Malley 3
Clinton 44
Sanders 45
O’Malley 5
New Hampshire is an absolute must-win state for Sanders, particularly if he cannot turn things around in Iowa. It is a particularly favorable electorate for him, and a state where he has been better known for longer than the rest of the country. The race seems to be moving away from him- at the height of his popularity in mid-September, Sanders led Clinton in the RCP average by 13 points- 45 to 32. The current average has a Clinton lead of 7.7 points, but it does include a fairly unbelievable poll from Gravis giving her a 21 point advantage. If we remove that poll and take the next one back, the race is 44-48 (and that’s because we roll in a nearly equally implausible poll giving Sanders a 15 point lead) These numbers include the FOX poll and do not yet include Morning Consult. All in all, Clinton has led in 6 of the 11 polls released in October and November. We can’t say much with certainty about New Hampshire besides that it is a close race, and Sanders has lost his once hefty advantage there.
Clinton 59
Sanders 30
O’Malley 2
Nevada is a caucus state and notoriously difficult to poll, so we’ve seen nothing like the volume of polling in the other early states. What little polling there HAS been has shown substantial leads for Clinton. RCP does not have this current poll up, but of the two polls they have since Clinton and Sanders announced their candidacies we have a Gravis poll showing Clinton up 55-18 from July and a CNN/ORC poll from early October showing her up 50-34 (and Biden at 12). Given her recent trajectory in the overall race since the first debate and her dominant support from organized labor, the Morning Consult numbers pass a gut check, but there is no trend to compare it to.
Clinton 64
Sanders 20
O’Malley 0
The story in South Carolina remains the same as it has been- the only question at this point is the margin of the blowout. Clinton’s 44 point lead here is actually a bit lower than her 53 point lead in the RCP average. Barack Obama won South Carolina by “just” 29 points in 2008, so the lead is very impressive. At the height of Bidenmania, Sanders managed a 28 point deficit at 48-20 (with Biden also at 20), but Clinton has led by at least 35 points in every single poll since Biden declared his intention not to run. There do not appear to be crosstabs available for the Morning Consult polls, but it seems likely that Sanders’s continued struggles in the state point to a persistent lack of support from African American voters and moderate Democrats. South Carolina is a Saturday primary at the end of the month, and sits just three days before Super Tuesday, where the bulk of the races are in the South, meaning more black and moderate voters for Sanders to contend with.
Super Tuesday:
Clinton 47
Sanders 12
O’Malley 2
Undecided 39
According to this News 9/News on 6 poll, Oklahoma Democrats are not particularly fond of any of the candidates, potentially because they’re all from the left spectrum of the party. That said, Clinton is close to a majority. If the undecideds break roughly along the same lines as those already decided, Clinton wins 77-20-3. It will be interesting going forward to see where the candidates put their Super Tuesday focus.
Other States:
Clinton 47
Sanders 19
O’Malley 2
Arizona votes near the end of March, on the 22nd. The poll release is a bit obscure in it’s language, but we see the continuing trend of Sanders doing best among younger people, with Clinton increasing as voters get older (she does still defeat him by ten points among the youngest voters, however)
Over half of Sanders’s support (54%) comes from Hispanic voters, but we don’t know enough about the demographic breakdown in the polls to figure out how much Clinton actually leads him by in this demographic. About 30% of Arizona residents identify as Hispanic, according to the Census, but we don’t know how that breaks down into registered voters, and between the parties.
WISCONSIN
Clinton 50
Sanders 41
O’Malley 2
Still following the release of the other numbers. A bit closer than last month when Hillary led by 12, but she has reached the 50% mark.
The National Numbers:
These posts will focus more on state polling, since we don’t have a national primary, but we’ll include any new national numbers at the bottom.
Clinton 59
Sanders 26
O’Malley 7
PPP hasn’t released a national poll since the beginning of October, when Clinton led 42-24-1 (with Biden included at 20). Clinton’s 33 point lead in this poll is better than her 23 point lead in the RCP average, but the national numbers have been all over the place lately with Clinton’s support during November ranging from 52-59 and Sanders’s ranging from 26-35. This poll pretty much tells us what we already knew- Clinton has been on the move since mid-October and has consolidated most of the Biden support. The only surprise here may be O’Malley’s 7 points- the best showing he’s had in any national poll to date (breaking his previous record of 5 from a CBS poll a week ago)
Of particular note in this poll is Clinton’s dominance among Hispanic voters. While her 70-13 lead among African Americans is massive, her 84-8 lead among Hispanics is astonishing.
Clinton 57
Sanders 26
O’Malley 2
Very similar to PPP’s numbers, besides O’Malley’s number.
Clinton 52
Sanders 31
O’Malley 4
Clinton’s 21 point margin here is a bit better than the 16 point advantage she had a week ago in this poll, but these numbers seem to bounce around quite a bit for a poll released as often as this one. The poll before the 16 point gap showed a 29 point advantage for Clinton, so I have to wonder if anything has shifted that dramatically over the last three weeks. An eight point shift over three weeks would be enough to wonder about, but to see a 13 point shift in favor of Sanders and then another 5 point shift in favor of Clinton in the space of less than a month is surprising.
I will continue to update throughout the day if/when new polls are released. Let me know in the comments if you catch a poll I haven’t seen yet.