While Biden has slipped in the polling compared to his peak of 4 or 5 months ago, a glance at the RCP polling average shows his support has really been fairly stable. Biden’s minimum thus far has always been considerably above Sanders’ maximum.
It’s not so much that Biden has fallen as it is that Warren has risen. But it appears to me that most of Warren’s uptick has come at the expense of Sanders and Harris, not Biden.
I think Biden’s biggest problem is that the first two contests are very unrepresentative of what the larger Democratic Party electorate looks like, and the media put way too much emphasis on those two states. (The media narrative re Iowa and New Hampshire is so ridiculous that I recall distinctly in 2016 when Chris Matthews asked his guests on Hardball “If Sanders wins both Iowa and New Hampshire is the contest over?” I think I literally screamed at the television when Chris asked that.)
While a lot of the media narrative now seems to be predicting that Warren will be the nominee (certainly the betting markets overwhelmingly say that), if I were Biden, I wouldn’t be feeling too badly at this point.
(I assume the betting markets are kind of like the stock market in that a stock’s value isn’t all about past performance and is instead more about prospects for the future. In that regard, I agree that Warren’s long-term prospects look better than Biden’s.)
If Warren really is the current frontrunner, or even the current co-frontrunner, wouldn’t you’d expect her to be ahead in some of these polls?
From FiveThirtyEight site: