Warren's slow and steady gains now give her a 22-point lead in the Daily Kos presidential straw poll

Warren notches her biggest win in Daily Kos straw poll this season.

The last set of results before election season truly gets underway, post-Labor Day. 

	8/27	8/14	8/2	7/17	7/2	6/11	5/29	5/14	5/1	4/15	4/2	3/18	2/18	2/5	1/22	1/8
WARREN	39	34	33	35	29	34	25	25	19	12	12	12	10	17	18	22
SANDERS	17	23	25	20	25	25	34	26	34	40	33	38	44	13	12	11
BIDEN	11	10	12	11	7	12	10	14	18	5	8	-	8	11	13	14
YANG	9	7	5	4	3	2	2	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Buttigieg	7	6	6	7	7	10	9	9	10	21	18	6	-	-	-	-
harris	6	8	7	14	19	7	11	11	8	9	11	11	15	27	27	14
OTHER	9	10	10	9	10	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
UNSURE	2	2	2	**	**	3	2	3	4	3	4	5	4	6	6	9
(VOTES)	58.5K	54K	59.3K	57.2K	63.2K	57.5K	39.8K	60K	53.1K	35.5K	40.2K	52.5K	56K	42.2K	28K	35.5K

Is there a more consistently improving candidate than Elizabeth Warren? Nope. Just as in the real world, her slow and steady gains have come from hard, grind-it-out work, one selfie at a time. While other candidates are begging the wealthy for cash, she’s meeting voters and winning them over.

Her 22-point victory isn’t the biggest of this season. Back on February 18, Bernie Sanders notched a 29-point victory. A month later on March 18, he won by 27. But things tightened up after that, and no one saw a 20+ victory until yesterday. 

Now, there is an interesting dynamic at play. On August 14, the combined Warren-Sanders vote was 57. Two weeks before that, it was 58. Two weeks before that, it was 55. You get the point, that their combined two-candidate score has been hovering in the mid-50s. Today? Their combined total is … 56. So the “left wing” of the party continues to hover around that mid-50s mark, but Warren saw her total go up five, while Sanders dropped 6. In fact, Sanders’ 17% is his worst showing since February 5.

It’s impossible to tell with any certainty, of course, but what this suggests is that at least on Daily Kos and the broader political online world, there is the beginnings of a consolidation around Warren. This is exactly what Warren needs to win the nomination, and Sanders’ biggest threat. If this dynamic bleeds into the broader world, it may well fray the (seemingly) unspoken non-aggression pact between the two candidates. 

Kamala Harris continues her streak of streakiness, this time dropping to sixth overall. Her 6% in this straw poll is her low-water mark. She was once at 27%. Buttigieg is solid and steady at 7%. He’s found his core level of support, and doesn’t appear to be in any danger of falling further … or rising. Andrew Yang has a great core of committed online supporters, ready and willing to spam any online poll. He’s come a lot further than he had any business doing so, and along with Buttigieg, proves that you don’t need Iowa to “discover” no-name candidates. Really, the excuses for Iowa to keep its first-in-the-nation status are all busted. 

Joe Biden’s 11% shows that Daily Kos is not like the broader Democratic primary electorate, which is currently giving Biden 30-35% of the vote. Are we the bleeding edge, or are we outliers? Time will tell. 

Given that support for other candidates is a mere 9-10%, it starts getting harder and harder to see where Warren might get new support. Certainly from that core of undecided and supporters of non-viable candidates. Warren’s Achilles heel is her thus-far inability to win significant black votes. Curiously, neither has Harris nor Cory Booker—that vote is still with Biden. Presumably, Warren can eat into that vote, but what seems more possible is for Harris to do so. So where else can Warren pick up votes? 

Perhaps Bernie hasn't bottomed out, but we have to be approaching his core base of support, right? At some point, that left wing of the party will have to consolidate if they hope to win the nomination, but that day is at least six months away, so there's no real pressure to do so right now. Maybe Warren can chip a little more of that Bernie vote, but there’s likely not much more there to get. 

This is all to say, I’m going to guess right now that Warren stabilizes at around 40% of the straw poll vote for a while, plus or minus a few points based on the whims of the campaign season. Maybe she’ll get to 45% as other candidates drop out. It’ll be fun to see.