Clinton On Top Midwest, Mountain West, and the South (Plus nationwide)- Today in Primary Polling

THE STATES

A relative flood of state polling today compared to what we’ve seen lately. We head to Iowa, North Carolina, and Montana with solid leads for Clinton across the board.

Iowa

Monmouth University (Fivethirtyeight rating: A-)

Clinton 55

Sanders 33

O’Malley 6

Monmouth switched their screen for this poll, so it isn’t a direct comparison to their last one that had Clinton leading by a somewhat improbable 41 points (65-24). They DID include the results as they would look from their previous sampling, where Clinton leads 57-30. Obviously that is a marked improvement from their last poll, though I’m sure that the difference between losing by 27 and 41 isn’t of THAT much comfort to Sanders.

They also tested some other turnout scenarios, and Sanders does better as turnout (particularly among young voters) increases, but he still is behind by double digits under the rosiest turnout projections in this particular poll. Overall, this poll is fairly in line with much of the other polling we’ve seen yesterday. Clinton runs just a point ahead of her average in the Pollster aggregate, and Sanders is a few points behind his. When Monmouth releases their next poll, we’ll get a better apples to apples comparison using the new screen, as their numbers under the old screen are a sample only about half the size of the full sample, and are therefore inherently less reliable.

North Carolina

PPP (Fivethirtyeight rating: B-)

Clinton 60

Sanders 21

O’Malley 10

Clinton's 39 point margin here is a slight improvement from PPP’s last poll where she led by 37 (61-24). In their September poll, she led by a much smaller 20 points, but that poll included Biden in second place just seven points behind her. The polling here has been pretty stable accounting for the Biden effect. Only two pollsters have put out much data here (PPP and Elon) and her support in Biden-free polling has ranged from 53-61 since Sanders got in the race. Sanders’s support grew somewhat initially and has leveled off, with his range going from 14-24.

Sanders weakness continues to be with African American voters, where he trails 79-9. In addition, the belief that he will get more popular as he is better known is certainly not true in North Carolina. Clinton’s net favorability with Democratic primary voters is a solid  +38 (66-28-7).

Sanders on the other hand not only sports an anemic +16 (47-31-22) but actually has slightly higher unfavorable ratings than Clinton with lower name recognition. If the folks who don’t know Sanders break at the same ratio as those who do, he will end up with a 60-40 favorable rating- and that may be optimistic given that the folks most likely to know about Sanders at this point would be those who support him. The numbers stand in even starker contrast among black voters- Clinton’s got a strong +61, while Sanders is just +9.

While there is still a factor of being unknown, Sanders also has to contend with being relatively unpopular (with white and black voters in the case of North Carolina).

North Carolina goes to the polls on mini-Super Tuesday along with Ohio, Missouri, Florida, and Illinois, meaning that this is an expensive hole for Sanders to dig himself out of, particularly if he needs to focus on gaining back ground in Iowa for the next two months. That’s going to give him just about a month after New Hampshire to shore up support on Super Tuesday and beyond, in some of the largest and most demographically disadvantageous states for him.

Montana

Montana State University/Billings (Fivethirtyeight rating: A-)

Clinton 47

Sanders 30

Montana doesn’t vote until June 7th, just a week ahead of the final primary in Washington DC.  It is very unlikely that the race will have much of an impact on the overall primary as it is so late in the calendar and will have relatively few delegates up for grabs. Whoever is winning at this point won’t be taken down even by a terrible loss in Montana even if the nomination is still contested at that point. That said, a poll is a poll, and we’ll include it in the pile.

There hasn’t been a poll in Montana since February when neither of the candidates were running, and Clinton led O’Malley 42-1 (Sanders was not included).

NATIONAL

USA Today/Suffolk (Fivethirtyeight rating: B- for Suffolk only)

Clinton 56

Sanders 29

O’Malley 4

These results are about in line with what we've seen from other pollsters lately with a strong 27 point lead for Clinton. Their last poll included Biden, and was 41-23-20. Since then Clinton is up 15, Sanders is up 6, and undecided/other is down 1. 

DISCLAIMER: I don’t have a lot of faith in the Ipsos/Reuters tracking poll, but they do occasionally release the daily results as well as their weekly releases, so I will include the numbers as they are available.

They’ve updated their daily results through today, yesterday we only had results through the fourth, so here are the daily results. Keep in mind, each day is the average of the last five days, not the results of polling for that day only.

Ipsos/Reuters (Fivethirtyeight rating: C+_

The candidates have been moving away from each other pretty steadily since December 2nd when the average was just 49-37. Clinton is up 9 points since then while Sanders is down 8. While the last few days have been steady, this poll is still subject to very wild swings that seem to bear no relation to anything happening in the campaign. 

THE AVERAGES

All results are Clinton-Sanders-O’Malley. There is not enough data for a Montana average

Iowa

RCP- 53-39-5 (Clinton +14)

Pollster- 55-36-4 )Clinton +19)

North Carolina

RCP: 59-23-8

Pollster: 60-23-4

National

RCP: 56-31-2 (never includes Ipsos/Reuters)

Pollster: 56-32-3

THE HISTORY

Results are from early November of 2007, about two months from the Iowa caucuses. The last five polls are averaged. Modern results are the average of the last five polls released, as well, for a more direct comparison.

Iowa

(This is the same update from yesterday with the current numbers adjusted slightly to reflect today’s new poll)

Iowa

The average of the five most recent polls starting on November 7th, 2007 (about two months before the Iowa caucuses)

Clinton 28

Obama 24 (Clinton +4)

The average of the five most recent polls starting today (about two months before the Iowa caucuses)

Clinton 53

Sanders 38 (Clinton +15)

There’s no doubt that Clinton is in a much stronger position two months out from the Iowa caucuses. She remains over 50% and with a much wider margin than she enjoyed in 2007. What’s more, Edwards was also averaging 20% at this point in 2007. All together, the three major candidates added up to just 72% of the vote, leaving a sizeable chunk of undecided voters or people supporting the more marginal candidates.

This time around, 90% of the voters are supporting one of the major candidates, leaving significantly less room for growth.

For comparison- the average of the five most recent polls starting on DECEMBER 7th, 2007-

Clinton 27

Obama 29

Edwards 22

By December 7th of 2007 (about a month out from the caucuses) Obama had taken a slim lead going into the holidays.

North Carolina

North Carolina was much later in the cycle in 2008, coming in early May, but it was a key contest where Obama’s solid win and his close loss in Indiana on the same day led many to conclude that the race was indeed over. We will use the same date range from November because the Iowa caucuses did reshape the 2008 race significantly, but keep in mind that there is a much shorter time between today and the North Carolina primary than there was eight years ago.

Then

Clinton 35

Edwards 24

Obama 19 (Clinton +16)

Now

Clinton 56

Sanders 22 (Clinton +34)

Clearly, Clinton is much better positioned than she was in 2007, and with less time to go. Add to that the timing with North Carolina coming on a day with five other large states just two weeks after Super Tuesday.

Montana

Montana was as late in the cycle as it could be in 2008, coming on the final day of voting along with South Dakota. There was no polling at the comparable point in 2007, and there were only three polls overall. 

National

Once again, the same commentary from yesterday, and the new polling did not shift the averages.

The average of the five most recent polls starting on November 7th, 2007 (about two months before the Iowa caucuses)

Clinton 45

Obama 23 (Clinton +22)

The average of the five most recent polls starting today (about two months before the Iowa caucuses)

Clinton 57

Sanders 30 (Clinton +27)

Once again we see a nominally stronger lead for Clinton, and much better positioning as she sits closer to 60 than she was to 50 eight years ago.

For comparison- the average of the five most recent polls starting on DECEMBER 7th, 2007-

Clinton 43

Obama 25 (Clinton +18)