It’s early days and lots of great candidates (including Warren, Beto, Harris, etc) have far lower name recognition than Biden and Bernie, NH isn’t representative of the country. All that said:
This isn’t a “straw poll”, it’s a poll of 1152 registered Democrats conducted Jan 2-3.
Interesting bit of detail, Bernie is the choice of 48% of under 35 Democrats in NH. For those 35-49, this drops to 28%. Biden leads 50-64 year olds, with 25% (Bernie is second with 17%). Voters 65+ are 23% for Biden, 17% for Bernie. Warren, Beto and Joe Kennedy III also make it into the top 5, as does Hillary Clinton in some age groups.
On issues, NH Democrats polled here rank environmental issues in the top 2. BLM favorability is sky high at 72%, big corporations in contrast are at 8% favorability. This is a picture of an electorate that seems to be further left than most Democrats.
Bernie leads among men, comes in second among women. Biden leads among women. Warren, Beto and Joe Kennedy III are third, fourth and fifth respectively for both men and women.
The thing that sticks out to me is how high Kennedy polls, and I think that may be a regional effect (his district, MA-4 is close by). I’m also somewhat puzzled by how high Kerry polls. Also, buried in the detailed polling is the Democratic Socialist approval among Beto supporters (around 50%, higher than among Bernie supporters).
54% of respondents say Bernie is among the three candidates who care most about people like them. He polls much higher than other candidates for this important metric (but keep in mind that many respondents haven’t formed opinions about other candidates yet).
The survey also tries to rank preferences based on engagement/awareness level (measured by how many candidates the respondent has a view on). On that measure, Bernie is most preferred by Democrats with low-awareness. He is even with Biden among medium-awareness voters, and third (behind Biden and Warren) among high-awareness primary voters.
You could argue that we need to win low awareness/engagement voters and Bernie does a good job there. Alternatively, you could argue the more people learn, the more support for Bernie will drop. If Biden does declare, this will be his third run, and my sense is that Democratic voters haven’t picked him his first two tries and won’t in his third.
To me, this poll underscores just how fluid these rankings are right now, and how long a road we have ahead. Voters will let us know in 12-15 months.
— @subirgrewal