53,000 of you voted, and the whole field has been shaken up.
|
5/1 |
4/15 |
4/2 |
3/18 |
2/18 |
2/5 |
1/22 |
1/8 |
BERNIE SANDERS |
34 |
40 |
33 |
38 |
44 |
13 |
12 |
11 |
Elizabeth Warren |
19 |
12 |
12 |
12 |
10 |
17 |
18 |
22 |
Joe Biden |
18 |
5 |
8 |
- |
8 |
11 |
13 |
14 |
Pete Buttigieg |
10 |
21 |
18 |
6 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
KAMALA HARRIS |
8 |
9 |
11 |
11 |
15 |
27 |
27 |
14 |
BETO O’ROURKE |
2 |
3 |
6 |
10 |
4 |
5 |
8 |
15 |
AMY KLOBUCHAR |
1 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
6 |
6 |
- |
- |
JAY INSLEE |
1 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
- |
- |
- |
UNSURE |
4 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
6 |
6 |
9 |
OTHER |
3 |
3 |
2 |
8 |
2 |
4 |
5 |
9
|
(SAMPLE SIZE) |
53.1K |
35.5K |
40.2K |
52.5K |
56K |
42.2K |
28K |
35.5K |
The two big winners this week are Biden, up 13, and Warren, up 7. The Buttigieg boomlet busted big time, down 11, while Inslee and Klobuchar are relegated with just 1 percent of the vote. Sanders wins the day, but he’s down six from last week. Given that “other” is just at 3 percent, there’s clearly no appetite for anyone outside of the top five. And wow, Beto has been a bust, huh?
Here are the raw vote changes from two weeks ago, for the top five candidates:
|
Vote change, 4/15 vs 5/1 |
Bernie Sanders |
+3,921 |
Elizabeth Warren |
+6,087 |
Joe Biden |
+7,679 |
Pete Buttigieg |
-2,474 |
Kamala Harris |
+1,132 |
Biden gets the big bump from his announcement. Watch him fade over the next several months. In our private Civiqs polling, Biden gets 42 percent of the Democratic primary vote among African Americans, and just 24 percent among whites. That support will fade, just like Hillary Clinton’s did in 2008, as black voters become aware of the alternatives and find out that Biden clings to his opposition to busing for school desegregation, his treatment of Anita Hill gets re-litigated, and his authorship of the infamous crime bill is hashed out publicly. He won’t hold on to much of those white voters either. There’s a reason he’s failed twice before to win the nomination.
Warren’s relentless focus on substance (her campaign swag says “Warren has a plan for that”) is paying early dividends. Harris is holding steady. I still think she has the most potential upside. Buttigieg is a small liberal college-town mayor. He should be gearing up for a run for Senate or governor, not president. Oh well. The same can be said about O’Rourke, Montana’s Steve Bullock, Texas’ Julian Castro, Stacey Abrams, and several others. Thankfully, online activist seem to agree. The lack of substance (incredibly, his website still lacks an issues page!), his treatment of his black police chief, and his recent mangling of the vaccine issue is proving he’s not ready for the BIG stage.
Bernie’s online turnout machine actually improved from his performance two weeks ago, yet as more people become engaged and active, they’re going elsewhere (for now, Biden and Warren).
Interesting note: The first several thousand votes, from the website proper, were heavy Warren support:
Then the call went out to the Berniesphere. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that. I like online supporter intensity. We need our nominee to also have that! At that point, our traffic referrals were dominated by Bernie-focused sites. And before long, we had this, at around 6,000 votes:
Eventually, he pushed up to 40 percent. Then we sent a link to the poll to our email list and SMS. Turns out that our email list is a hotbed of Biden support, and eventually, that pushed the numbers to where they ended up.
So to recap: Daily Kos website audience is heavy Warren, the email list is heavy Biden, and the rest of the political liberal internet is Bernie.
Big questions for the weeks and months ahead: Who is going to scoop of Biden’s support as it begins to level off? He has max name ID. If you’re not inclined to support him already, why would you later? All the money in the world can’t change that. (That’s also Bernie’s problem.)
Will Buttigieg retain that 10%-ish level of support, or will he completely fade? If so, where does that support go? Right now, The people he lost have seemingly gone to Biden and Warren. Can Warren continue to scoop up his latent support?
Where will Harris grow? Biden’s trove of black support is an obvious source. When and how does she begin to scoop them up? Where else does she grow?
And does Bernie hold steady at that 30% range? His overall strategy appears focused on winning a brokered convention, and his campaign rhetoric (and his supporters’ actions) certainly don’t seem focused on expanding his base of support. He doesn’t have a monopoly on progressivisim this time around. He has a deeply loyal base, but how much of it will stick with him? Warren would sure love to scoop up even 5-10 percent of that.