With Labour Day (September 2) — the traditional start of the campaign season — almost here, a raft of new polls is giving insights into which candidates lead the 2020 presidential race and why and what Americans think about the issues the country faces.
It’s commonplace for people to say they don’t trust polls or don’t like them. Certainly some politicians misuse them to substitute numbers for principles. And polls are, of course, no more perfect than any other human invention.
But despite much carping to the contrary, polls have a remarkably good record of accuracy in American elections — even in 2016. More important, polling is the one element of the political process that allows us to hear directly what voters from all parts of the country and all walks of life have to say. So, let’s dive in.
The Democratic race has a fairly consistent picture, with three main elements: First, the main candidates remain in the early stage of the race. Only about 1 in 8 Democratic voters have firmly made up their minds,according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released this summer. History suggests that won’t change a lot until late fall.
That doesn’t mean the race is wide open, however. Whether a poll asks voters for their one top choice or to name all the candidates they are considering, a clear top tier emerges. And overwhelmingly, 81 per cent in a recent poll by YouGov for the Economist, Democratic voters say they’re happy with their choices: There’s no hunger for some other option.
That’s a big reason we’ve started to see lower-ranked candidates dropping out, like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who quitthe race last Wednesday.
Second, former vice president Joe Biden remains ahead of the pack, but not by a huge margin. Biden has, on average, just short of 30 per cent of the vote among Democrats nationwide. That’s been true most of the summer.
Third, among the rest, only Senator Elizabeth Warren has shown sustained ability to expand her support. In May, Biden had more than 40 per cent support in polling averages, and Warren’s backing was in the high single digits. Since then, she’s doubled her support while his has dropped. No one else has significantly moved.
The Massachusetts senator now is more or less tied with Senator Bernie Sanders for second place in polling averages. Others, including Senator Kamala Harris and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, have had moments. But those have faded.
How does support break down among the top candidates? Biden consistently does better among self-described moderates. Warren and Sanders divide up self-described liberals.
The former vice president also does well among older voters. In the Economist/YouGov survey, for example, Biden got only 6 per cent support among voters ages 18-29 but 40 per cent among those 65 or older. Sanders has the opposite picture, with a third of the vote among 18- to 29-year-olds but only 2 per cent among his fellow senior citizens.
Older voters have a much better record of showing up for primaries than younger voters do. Warren gets pretty even support across age groups. Her big strength comes from liberal whites who have taken a keen interest in the race.
In last week’s poll from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, for example, Warren nearly tied Biden among voters nationwide who said they were paying “a lot” of attention to the race.
Sanders, by contrast, got only 1 per cent among that group. His support came from people who said they were paying “some” or no attention. That’s another reason for skepticism about his long-term standing: A large portion of his support may simply be name recognition among people who aren’t likely to show up to vote. Warren’s big challenge is a shortage of support from black voters and non-college-educated whites. Biden got nearly half the black vote in the Quinnipiac poll, for example. Warren was at 10 per cent, essentially tied with Sanders and Harris. — DPA
David Lauter
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