A Look at the Democratic Primary Polls Before the Next States Vote Tuesday Night

By Shane Ryan  |  March 10, 2020 | 10:26am
Photo courtesy of Getty
Politics Features Democratic Primary
A Look at the Democratic Primary Polls Before the Next States Vote Tuesday Night

Tuesday night, Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Washington, and North Dakota will take center stage in the Democratic primary, and Bernie Sanders will be desperate for some wins after a disappointing showing in the Super Tuesday primaries a week ago. But as a series of recent polls shows, things aren’t looking good. A representative sample:

Joe Biden has seemingly widened his lead both nationally and in the key states voting Tuesday, which was to be expected in places like Mississippi, but is more of a surprise in a state like Michigan where Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. A look at the recent polls out of Michigan shows Biden’s lead in double digits, anywhere between 12 points and 41, depending on the poll. It’s no better in Missouri, where the two most recent polls have him up 30 points, or Mississippi, where Sanders is polling so low that he may not reach the viability threshold of 15%. Sanders is closer, but still trailing, in Washington and Idaho, and there aren’t many reliable polls for the North Dakota firehouse caucuses…which won’t matter much anyway.

Things have changed rapidly on multiple occasions in this primary, but with Biden strongholds like Florida and New York looming, these polls make it seem as though Super Tuesday was the death knell for everyone except the former vice president. There are a lot of what-if scenarios—what if Warren had dropped out before Super Tuesday, which might have yielded Sanders four more states, or what if Buttigieg and Klobuchar had not dropped out, allowing the moderates to consolidate behind Biden? That’s all academic at this point, though, which means Sanders has to pull off a series of stunners tonight to have any hope of slowing the Biden juggernaut.

 
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