Mike Bloomberg Ties Elizabeth Warren for Third in New Poll
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images
Former Republican New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has passed former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and pulled into a tie for third place with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in a new national Democratic primary poll.
The latest Hill/HarrisX poll shows former Vice President Joe Biden with a big lead over the rest of the field at 28 percent, with Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the runner-up spot with 16 percent.
But the most surprising result was in the bronze slot:
The nationwide poll, which was released Friday, shows Bloomberg up from 5 percent to 11 percent support for the nomination nationally. The former New York City mayor is now in a dead heat for third place with top-tier candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who also received 11 percent support.
…Bloomberg’s rise in the latest Hill-HarrisX survey comes in spite of his late entry into the 2020 race and the fact that he hasn’t appeared in any of the Democratic primary debates.
Bloomberg has chosen an unorthodox campaign strategy, making the decision not to raise money and instead deciding to fund his own campaign. This has disqualified him from taking the debate stage under rules from the Democratic National Convention.
The poll shouldn’t necessarily alarm the Warren campaign, since this poll has consistently under-measured Warren’s support by significant margins, but it does add a new wrinkle to an issue that has roiled Democratic politics, especially recently.
Throughout December, Warren and Buttigieg feuded about transparency and fundraising, which came to a head during December’s PBS Newshour/Politico debate.
Warren has sworn off big-dollar “wine cave” fundraisers and suggested that candidates who don’t follow suit are “corrupt,” while Buttigieg defended the practice as necessary to defeat President Donald Trump. Sanders outdid both of them by a notch with the boast that he’s the only candidate not to take any money from billionaires.
The result of that high-profile dustup has been very little change in polling between the candidates who participated in it, while a candidate who funds his campaign exclusively with billionaire cash has crept into their polling tier.
The December debate was the lowest-rated of this election so far, but this result suggests that the highest-profile clash to come out of it has done little to change support for any of the candidates, and that the source of a candidate’s campaign funds either does not significantly animate voters, or is already baked in to their support.
