Bloomberg's Super Tuesday Strategy Might Be Working

Where exactly has Bloomberg been gaining momentum? Not surprisingly, in Super Tuesday states and beyond (meaning those states where the primary is later). According to a recent Monmouth University national poll, Bloomberg polls at 12 percent among Democratic voters whose state primary is after March 3 — Super Tuesday.

And in many Super Tuesday states, or states with even later primaries, Bloomberg is now polling in the top four. Many of these states don’t have enough polls for us to calculate a reliable polling average, but in those that do, Bloomberg has shown signs of improvement in recent weeks. In Texas and North Carolina, for instance, Bloomberg has overtaken Buttigieg and sits in fourth with between 8 and 9 percent support. He has the third-highest polling average in Florida (ahead of Sen. Elizabeth Warren) and fourth-highest in Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, whose primaries all fall after Super Tuesday. In California, however, he remains in fifth place with 6 percent. And in states where we don’t have polling averages yet, recent polls suggest that Bloomberg could finish in the top tier. In the past week, individual polls have Bloomberg tied for second in New York and trailing only former Vice President Joe Biden in Missouri. He was also fourth in a Suffolk University poll of Utah, at 13 percent.

There are also signs that Bloomberg might be able to attract more support among voters of color (who make up almost half of Democratic primary voters) and those without a college degree (about 38 percent of primary voters). In December, a national Monmouth University poll found that 3 percent of nonwhite Democratic voters said they supported Bloomberg. But that figure had grown to 8 percent in its January poll. The pollster also found Bloomberg’s support among voters without a college degree grew from 4 percent in December to 10 percent in January. Fox News and SurveyUSA polls also found signs of Bloomberg diversifying his base: Fox News’s latest poll shows a 5-point uptick in support among nonwhite Democratic primary voters (5 percent to 10 percent) and a 4-point bump (2 percent to 6 percent) among non-college educated white voters since December. SurveyUSA, meanwhile, found a 5-point gain among black voters (2 percent to 7 percent) and a 6-point gain among voters with just a high school diploma since late November.

Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Super Tuesday states and beyond has put Bloomberg on the map, but the still unanswered question is whether he can maintain his front-runner status while skipping the first four contests. If he can, some of the later states are very delegate rich, so skipping the first four could pay off for Bloomberg.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bloombergs-super-tuesday-strategy-might-be-working/