Wow, they give Biden only a 22% chance of winning the nomination?
I need to get a bet down on Biden, stat! Those odds are a steal. I’d take him against the field at even money.
Yeah, I’d say the numbers for the other top 4 seem pretty accurate: Biden should get the rest and be around 50/50.
If he gets off to a worse-than-expected start in IA and NH, then there’s the possibility that he could bleed supporters heading into what, right now, looks to be his bulwark: South Carolina.
Even if Biden’s support sags a bit, and even if he loses IA and NH, someone’s still got to take the nomination from him. Other than Warren briefly in the early fall, nobody’s really looked like they could do that.
His recent insults against an Iowan Democrat disturbed me. The guy, who wasn’t obviously anti-Biden until he got insulted, asked questions for which Biden needs a good answer. “Fatso, you’re a liar” isn’t it. Was he this bad when he was younger?
I agree that 22% seems very low, and betting Biden at Betfair may be a smart move. But this lovable dotard wasn’t the smartest bulb even when he was younger, and there’s a fair chance that the tantrum in Iowa wasn’t an isolated blunder and that we’ll be gnashing our teeth and wailing before November.
I was the Cassandra in 2016 calling for Biden to rescue us from Hillary. Now we need a white knight to rescue us from Biden. I see no enthusiasm for Michelle Obama — How about [just joking] Jimmy Carter? :eek: :rolleyes: He is NOT precluded by the 22nd Amendment and only just turned 95 years old. 
What’s even more disturbing is that he didn’t even call him ‘fatso’ or ‘fat ass’ - he said “Look, fat.” He can’t even get insults out of his mouth. A few years ago Biden was clearly a septuagenerian but he appeared to have his acuity intact; now he looks like he spends a guy who plays bridge all day.
So 538 has started putting out their averages:
Average as of Dec. 11, Biden 26.2% Sanders 17.0% Warren 15% Buttigieg 9.6%
I guess some lower ranked polls that you didn’t include helped Buttigieg and hurt Sanders.
Yeah, I just saw that this morning. I’m not sure if I’ll keep my average going or not, because my main motivation for it was the lack of a good-quality polling average out there.
Or it could be that they include older polls than I do - I believe that’s the case. Lately Sanders’ support has been increasing, and while Buttigieg’s support had been increasing until fairly recently, it’s started to drop. And since I drop older polls fairly quickly, it’s more sensitive to that.
(I can’t really say which way is better - my way, you can show real movement sooner, but you can also show meaningless, transitory shifts in the numbers that disappear the next week.)
Also, 538 has state-level averages for states where they feel they have enough polls. Here’s Wisconsin, for instance.
Well, I hope you keep it up. You basically have a slightly more ruthless version of what Silver is doing and I’m curious to see how much of a difference his extra thousand lines of code makes. 
What the hey, let’s keep doing this!
We’ve got a shitload of polls this week, and almost all of them are new.
A-rated: Fox, Emerson, Suffolk, Marist, and Monmouth (all new except Monmouth)
A/B rated: NBC-WSJ, CNN-SSRS, and IBD-TIPP, all new
B-rated: Quinnipiac, Ipsos, YouGov (all new or weekly except Ipsos)
B/C rated: Morning Consult (weekly)
C-rated: HarrisX (new - no longer repeats weekly)
So here are the numbers:
Candidate 9/12 9/18 9/25 10/2 10/9 10/15 10/24 10/31 11/8 11/15 11/27 12/4 12/11 12/19
Biden 26.5 28.5 28.4 27.6 26.2 28.7 28.4 28.1 27.1 27.2 26.3 26.6 25.9 26.9
Sanders 17.9 16.9 16.8 16.4 15.3 13.6 16.9 16.6 16.6 17.2 18.8 18.6 18.0 19.3
Warren 17.6 18.6 21.5 22.4 25.0 25.4 21.6 21.2 20.7 20.8 15.7 15.9 15.6 14.9
Buttigieg 5.0 5.7 5.8 5.6 5.2 6.0 6.2 7.1 7.6 7.5 10.0 10.3 8.5 8.4
Bloomberg 2.5 2.8 4.9 4.8
Klobuchar 2.0 2.1 2.3 2.3 1.9 1.9 2.6 3.3
Yang 2.5 2.8 3.0 2.9 3.1 2.4 2.2 2.3 2.5 2.7 3.2 3.1 3.3 3.1
Booker 2.4
Everyone else < 2.0
And the poll comparisons:
Candidate Average RTF RCP Econ 538
Biden 26.9 27.8 26.0 27.0
Sanders 19.3 19.3 16.0 18.0
Warren 14.9 15.2 15.0 14.8
Buttigieg 8.4 8.3 9.0 8.8
Bloomberg 4.8 5.0 8.0 4.6
Klobuchar 3.3 3.3 4.0 2.8
Yang 3.1 3.3 4.0 3.4
Booker 2.4 2.5 2.0 2.0
I think I’m a bit ahead of 538 on Bernie’s rise in the polls, as well as the Klobuchar and Booker boomlets. None of these depend on a fluke poll or two: Klobuchar and Booker are at 2% or higher in every poll except Ipsos, which rates everyone low; Bernie is in the 20s in 6 of the 8 A or A/B rated polls.
And I think Bloomberg’s finding that you can spend $100M to get you to 5% in the polls, but the next $100M won’t get you to 10%. Must be nice to have that sort of money to throw around.
Yay!
Yeah that Bloomberg comment links to a pet peeve of mine. Yes, less private money in politics would be good but people act like raising $100M is twice as likely to win an election to some schlub who only raised $50M. There are diminishing returns at that level.
My reports of the Predictwise/Betfair numbers may be unpopular, so I’ll promise to make this the last report this year.
Winner of election Nov. 3, 2020, sorted by likelihood. First number is chance of winning the D nomination. (’*’ denotes numbers missing from Predictwise which I therefore borrowed from Betfair. Gabbard’s numbers seem inconsistent; perhaps some weird scenario is envisioned.)
- 50% Trump
30% 15% Biden
21% 10% Sanders
16% 6% Warren
10% 4% Buttigieg
7% 4%* Bloomberg
3% 2%* Yang
4%* 2%* Clinton
2% 1% Klobuchar
0% 1% Gabbard - 1% Pence
- 1% Haley
Chance of Democratic Control in 2021:
70% House of Reps
49% White House
31% Senate
Sorry if the numbers are becoming more dismal. 
I haven’t bothered to put up the averages for the past few weeks, because other than the regular repeaters (Morning Consult, YouGov, and Harris) the only pollster that’s done a national poll since my last update has been Ipsos.
That’s been a pretty thin field to do an average of - I’d hardly need a spreadsheet to do the average, the back of an envelope would suffice. If that changes, I’ll resume putting up my numbers.
Right now the action’s in Iowa anyway.
The numbers from Betfair prediction market get more depressing. The first number is for November victory; 2nd is to become the D nominee.
55.1% - Trump
14.9% 31.1% Biden
13.0% 29.2% Sanders
6.0% 10.5% Bloomberg
3.5% 11.4% Warren
2.3% 6.8% Buttigieg
1.8% 2.3% Yang
1.2% 2.9% Clinton
0.7% 1.4% Klobuchar
0.4% - Pence
0.4% - Haley
0.3% 0.7% Steyer
0.3% 0.4% Gabbard
0.2% 0.5% Obama, M.
(The numbers do not imply that Bloomberg or Yang would necessarily be a strong candidate, just that if things get so peculiar that one of them gets the nomination, that same peculiarity — whatever it is — might propel them to November success.)
Naturally, later yesterday, Quinnipiac and IBD/TIPP both published new national polls. I’ll be posting new numbers either tomorrow night or Thursday.
I might even do an Iowa average. 
Barely 24 hours after my last post the numbers at Befair have shifted. Red is the new chance to win the nomination; Black is the chance a day ago, before the debate.
33.1% 31.1% Biden
28.7% 29.2% Sanders
10.3% 10.5% Bloomberg
12.5% 11.4% Warren
.5.8% …6.8% Buttigieg
.2.1% …2.3% Yang
.3.2% …2.9% Clinton
.1.1% …1.4% Klobuchar
.0.4% …0.7% Steyer
.0.2% …0.4% Gabbard
.0.5% …0.5% Obama, M.
Biden and Warren are up a bit; Buttigieg down a bit. I’m curious: Does this correspond to debate performance? Or is it just noise?
My guess would be mostly noise. Overall the debate last night was uneventful. Biden managed to look stable and was gaffe-free so if anything that would be the main takeaway for me. Warren’s response about a woman being able to win was very well stated so that was a good moment for her. But that was pretty much it.
Little bit of A, little bit of B. Before the debate there were some rumors that Sanders and Warren were going to start to go after Biden hard, but that did not materialize at all. So Biden’s numbers predebate may have been slightly lower based on that expectation.
Also a lot of people commented that Buttigieg seemed to disappear in last night’s debate. Especially compared to the December debate when other candidates were treating him as someone to go after, this one they just treated him like an also ran.
So now that the Christmas polling hiatus seems to be more or less over, I’m back with January numbers.
So far this year, we’ve had polls from A/B-rated IBD-TIPP and B-rated Quinnipiac and Ipsos, plus the latest iterations of the weekly polling from B-rated YouGov, B/C-rated Morning Consult, and C-rated HarrisX. And here are the numbers:
Candidate 1/15
Biden 26.0
Sanders 19.0
Warren 16.8
Buttigieg 7.6
Bloomberg 6.8
Yang 3.6
Klobuchar 2.8
Steyer 2.1
Everyone else < 2.0%
Comparison with other averages:
Candidate RTF 538 RCP Econ
Biden 26.0 26.8 27.2 27.0
Sanders 19.0 18.8 19.2 18.0
Warren 16.8 16.0 16.0 17.0
Buttigieg 7.6 7.1 7.2 6.0
Bloomberg 6.8 5.9 6.6 5.0
Yang 3.6 3.7 3.6 4.0
Klobuchar 2.8 3.1 3.2 4.0
Steyer 2.1 2.1 2.2 1.0
And just for the hell of it, Iowa. Within the past 2.5 weeks, we have polls by A-rated Selzer and Monmouth, and B/C-rated Neighborhood Research and Media, whoever the hell they are.
Candidate 1/19
Biden 20.1
Sanders 17.5
Buttigieg 16.6
Warren 15.8
Klobuchar 7.7
Yang 3.7
Steyer 2.8
Everyone else < 2.0