to try to win it.

have their "bases" that are giving them a good head start.

But, BHO was in a similar spot to where Mayor Pete, Kamala, O'Rourke are, so we will see.

voters lean in regard to priorities might give a good idea who holds the advantage.

After Super Tuesday, depending who stays in the race and who drops out I think will indicate whether we will have a brokered convention or not

not surprising this early in the process as you said, however, I disagree that those 35% have no opinion as you suggest.

I think knowing where these undecideds are in their list of priorities and expectations would point to which candidates have the advantage, and whether a brokered convention is likely. I suspect after Super Tuesday we would have a clear picture on the likelyhood of a brokered convention or not.

I would like to see more discussions about candidates ideas and platforms than a horse race of personality. I want more information. This is too early to focus on a winner. What do they stand for? I love the line up of so many qualified candidates and it does show the nation that any Democratic Party president would have a great choice of cabinet members.

but I'm not naive. Sadly, I don't think the country will vote for him.

Lesbian...engaged to a lovely young women and she is backing Biden...doesn't think Mayor Pete can win. She thinks only Biden can carry the states we need. His candidacy puts Ohio in play. No Republican has ever won the presidency without ohio.

very many black Democrats remained staunch Hillary supporters deep into the primary because they felt certain that enough white Americans were not yet ready to vote for a black man for president. Happily, they were wrong about that.

I'm sure when you live the discrimination every day, tho, there's good reason to feel that way.

Flip side of this argument, I concede, is that we were overly optimistic about where Americans were on a woman president in 2016. Hillary did win, but a 2.9 million vote margin wasn't enough to overcome the outrageously anti-democratic barrier of 538 hyperpartisans "electors" picking the president "for" us. We needed, and were expecting, an even bigger win than we got. We'll need a big margin next year too, to overcome all the extra hurdles and voter suppression aligned against us.

I like the prospect of Moderate Midwesterner Mayor Pete for VP rather than topping the ticket in 2020, btw.

That would be more befitting his age and experience as well.

Could, say, a Warren-Buttigieg ticket win? Sounds pretty damn good to me.

Mayor/Afghan War Veteran Pete's outstanding, he leaves so many other pols in the dust. I don't want to put him aside as a nation candidate unless we absolutely must. And after all, this is gonna happen sometime. Most people didn't believe we'd ever have a black president as soon as Obama.

That said, the goal is to win 2020. I'm willing to exclude anybody who can't win. But I'm not ready to conclude that of Mayor Pete yet. Let's watch.

...as was Hillary doing better than Biden is now.

Mostly it was due to more people expressing a preferred candidate: Hillary was consistently polling in the mid- to upper-30s, Obama was spending his second month consistently in the 20s, Edwards was still not rising out of the mid-teens, and everybody else was in single-digits.

So basically, I agree with your take: Biden and Bernie have have their own established "camps" of enthusiasm, but there's still too much of a reservoir of people who just aren't taking up sombody's flag this far out: double to triple what it was at this point in the 2008 cycle. Very, very easy for the weight of support to gel around someone other than those two.

Screen grab from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries


Screen grab from https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/democratic_presidential_nomination-191.html

how that breaks down would actually provide insight into which candidates have the most advantage.

To me that doesn't mean that the race is open for anyone running. Within those undecideds, how they lean will determine which candidates have an advantage.

The undecided will also determine how likely a brokered convention will be, and contrary to what some folks think here, I think the odds for a brokered convention is greater than 50%

is high.

and that is to beat Trump.

They are waiting to see who emerges as the strongest in that department. As months progress, most of them will vote for Biden.

We want someone who will beat trump. We want normalcy. Biden/Harris can beat trump. trump is afraid of Biden. That should tell you all you need to know. This is not about who I like or who you like. It's about who can win.

He doesn't nickname people he is afraid of, like Nancy Pelosi.

I don't believe those leaks coming from the White House about who he fears. Half of them are staged by Trump himself.

I don't put any stock in anything he believes other than that immigration is the best possible issue to stir up lot of people's anger with. But even that knowledge it took Bannon to explain to him.

So I don't care what Trump's assessments of the possible Dem candidates are... who the fat buffoon fears and who he claims he doesn't.

That said, flipping back 39,000 voters and taking back PA, MI, and WI absolutely IS the 2020 job. And yeah that puts a noteable checkmark in the Biden column.

by a 4 million margin, are going to pick Sanders over the others this time around.

Joe didn't run last time, so we don't know how he would have done.

Winning is priority #1.

She's my #1 choice for VP. Of all the female candidates, I like them all except for Gabbard. IMO Klobuchar is head and shoulders above the other fine female candidates running. She seems to have a deep understanding of reality that I just haven't seen yet from the other gals.

trump does not want to run against Joe.

"Independents leaning Democratic"?????

Bodes well for Biden in the Primaries, I guess, as these, I assume, would be who vote in those primaries.

At least its an A+ poll! LOL

Just trying to find how they identified an Independent leaning Democratic and then filtered out a normal Independent or a Independent leaning Green Party or Independent leaning Nazis.

Biggest question: Why all the changes in font?

Joe Biden is a true Dem.

Nothing has changed. He will never connect with black voters.

basically young white males.

Biden/Harris?

That's a winner.

With Biden in the race he will likely attack the Obama record.

if he wasnt already.

similar to how Biden helped add experience to Obama. but the opposite.

Folks want normalcy. Joe represents normalcy. Biden running with a strong progressive woman like Kamala Harris would be an excellent ticket. We have never had a female VP. Harris could then be positioned to become the first female president. I've seen where folks are saying Joe should announce that he will serve only one term. That is a very dumb idea. Why would we want Biden to be a lame duck president from the get go? No, if Biden wins, he should serve and then when it comes time to run for reelection, he'll let us know his plans.

-Laelth

Name recognition methinks.

to respondents and ask them to choose one. The order is randomised. Other candidates do relatively better in those polls.

Love it..😎 Go Cool Joe...




?c=2&imbypass=on


Love this......

A few surprises, to me. Sanders appeal is more to independents than Biden is, but Biden appeals more to those who want to energize the base. That surprised me.

I'm glad to see that the Af. American base and women go for Biden more than Sanders. I didn't expect that.

Biden does better with those over 50, Sanders does slightly better with those under 50, among Dems and left-leaning independents as a whole. That doesn't surprise me.

It's clear that at this time, the leaders are Biden, Sanders, and Pete.

Respondents were asked to nominate the name of their candidate. No list. I would love to hear some of the attempts to pronounce Buttigieg!

But return vs. change. Since the base loved Obama, they want to return to the good old days. Moderates were just okay with Obama and hate Trump, so they are looking for change. They may not agree with Sanders' direction, but at least he is different.

Unless you're thinking independents are moderates. But independents may not be moderate. They're independent just because they don't want to belong to a particular party. They may, in fact, hold extreme views.

Sanders is really a self-described independent (or socialist). Not exactly moderate.

Biden is a return to the good old days? I hadn't thought of it like that, exactly, but maybe so. Obama was fairly moderate. I think moderates like Obama a lot. But that's splitting hairs. Obama was a force unto himself.

I think most independents are moderates, though there are some exceptions like Sanders.

His party in the Senate has been listed as Independent and at times as a Socialist.

But he votes with the Dem. Party most of the time.

So, it's just a name, I guess. But the word has a bad connotation among the public.

a socialist and is anti capitalism.

all our candidates somewhere on that spectrum, even including blue dog Dems like Tim Ryan on its right to Sanders on the far left, it couldn't be. The questions are all how do we use progressivism in government. All but the people staking out the edges are mostly in agreement on the big liberal, progressive principles and goals and are staking out positions on the details.

Plus, all our liberal Democratic candidates are committed to advancing, going forward. They, and a majority of the electorate, want a return to ethical, competent government based on liberal, progressive principles.

The only people who want a return to yesterday without solving any of the huge problems Obama was only able to start fixing are what the media call the Republican "base."

None of our liberal Democratic candidates want that. Of course. And no one should be claiming any do because it's extremely untrue and a tremendous insult to our party.

There is, in fact a split in the party. Not an unbridgeable gap, but a split nonetheless.

Some people are incrementalists. They look for practical solutions to advance the ball a few yards down the field. This is good enough in most cases. It's what Obama did, and he was as successful as could be expected given the opposition. If you think that is still a viable way to win and govern, then you probably like Biden.

If you think incrementalism is not the way, that incrementalism is at a dead end and we need big changes -- whether it's killing off insurance companies, taking down the big banks, packing the Supreme Court, or restructuring the entire energy economy -- you are not an incrimentalist, you are a revolutionary.

I am a revolutionary. All the candidates I am most interested in are talking about big changes. We can't just get rid of Trump, we have to immediately take bold action. FDR and the New Deal type action. So I am not interested in Biden right now. But of course I'll happily vote for him if he's our candidate.

Joe and Pete sounds just perfect to me.

Personally, I see no value in the "horse race" at this stage.

Bring on the debates & primaries.

Go Joe !!!

that will occur between now and next spring.

with 100% name recognition, a lot of goodwill and alleged status as the only one who can defeat tRump.

My father is Joe's age and worked blue collar manual labor through high school and to put himself through college. He hasn't done that since his 20's and would never in a million years call himself "blue collar" because of jobs he worked decades ago, when the majority of his career has been spent in a suit and tie in office/management positions.

I'm absolutely supporting Joe if he is the nominee, but this whole "working class joe" approach is hokey as all get out and completely inaccurate (its almost as cringeworthy as John Kerry's salute/"reporting for duty" thing at the 2004 convention). What makes him "working class" over most of the other nominees? Especially since it opens up for discussion of some parts of his record that may not exactly support that image.

I just find it funny how we were all in agreement that "white working class" was code for racist and sexist back in 2016 but now so many people on here are using it as one of the main drivers and reasons for supporting Joe as a candidate (not all but many). To me, it's just pretty much saying the exact same thing: racists and sexists would be comfortable voting for him.

Which may absolutely be true, and may even absolutely be a reason why he should be our nominee. But let's at least either be fucking honest about that or come up with a better approach to conveying that message to voters.

he was usually if not always its least wealthy member. He's the guy who over so many years didn't capitalize off his office. Didn't reap financial advantage from it despite being the senator who could've most used it. Congress to Biden is and has always been about public service.

To me, in American politics, that's not nothing.

As far as I'm concerned he's Working Class or Middle Class, whichever, Uncle Joe for as long as he wants to be.

Where was Obama at this point in 2007?

Polls will be meaningless until at least June, when the debates start; even then only the state wide polls will have any real predictive power at that point in the campaign.

Biden is tagging the coalition needed to win this thing. At this moment, that is. But if the trend continues (and yes, it's early) then Joe Biden will remain the frontrunner. It's all about the campaigns run through the next year and the debates coming up.

Regardless of how Joe Biden does (obviously from my preference choice I believe he'll do very well), Biden can and will soften the target for 2020. He will not shirk from the attack. The more unhinged Trump becomes, the better the man is exposed as the demented demagogue he is and will continue to be. Joe's opening volley appealed to the country's better angels, the need to return the country to its principles and values, even though we too frequently fall short. We can dust ourselves off, get back in the saddle and do it again, do it better for all our people and the world at large.

Biden's policy prescriptions have already been outlined in his speech to the Electrical Workers' Forum. I expect a reiteration when he appears in Pittsburgh tomorrow. And details added as we move forward. All the Democratic issues were in that speech: healthcare, climate change, voters' rights, workers' rights, economic and social inequality, immigration, etc.

And the vision thing: we are better than this, bigger than this constant harangue and retreat from the Rule of Law, both here and abroad.

I saw a headline here the other day: It's The Country, Stupid

Indeed, it is. Winning is a must for 2020.

... but it's amazing how high Mayor Pete is after only a couple of weeks. Last month people hardly knew who he was, or how to pronounce his name.

It's still so early though, we can't really read too much into this. Biden's numbers will keep growing, but he won't get another bump like he got this week.

(April 22-25)... wait for the next set of polls...