No Clear Leader in Latest New Hampshire Poll… Except Surging Bernie Sanders

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Independent Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has nearly doubled his support in the latest poll of neighboring New Hampshire, climbing from 15 percent in December to 29 percent. Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg dropped to second place, with former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren essentially tied for third.

In the latest WBUR poll, Sanders leads the Democratic field at 29 percent, and as BUR notes, he is “well ahead of Buttigieg, who led in the last WBUR poll in December but is now in second place with 17 percent. Biden (14 percent) and Warren (13 percent) are virtually tied in third place.

None of the other frontrunners experienced a decline in support outside the poll’s margin of error, with Biden dropping the most at four percent, from 18 percent in December to 14 percent in January. But undecideds and non-voters declined by about 10 points, which could account for much of the Sanders surge.

When compared to other New Hampshire polls this month, the BUR survey is something of an outlier, as Sanders’ average lead in the state sits at about four points and a poll taken two days earlier shows Sanders in a statistical tie with Biden.

But it also follows another “outlier,” a CNN poll that showed Sanders taking a national lead for the first time.

These polls follow weeks in which Sanders has been locked in mortal combat with Warren over a private 2018 meeting during which she says Sanders told her a woman can’t defeat Trump in the general election, and with Biden over a series of attacks that resulted in one apology from Sanders.

It also follows a set of mixed polls from Iowa, where Sanders took a significant lead in the “gold standard” Des Moines Register poll, but trails Biden in an average of polls in the state. Meanwhile, Biden still leads overwhelmingly in early states with populations diverse enough to include a race cross tab, and with black voters nationally.

Those dynamics are also informed by general election polling, in which Biden generally beats Trump by the widest margins, but in which Sanders also performs well.

What does it all mean? Lots of good Twitter fights, and Joe Scarborough predicting a Mike Bloomberg presidency.