Tag Archives: Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Sanders Leading in California

By Jim Ellis

2020 Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders takes the lead in California

Jan. 13, 2020 — The new Capitol Weekly research survey (Jan. 1-9; 1,053 likely California Democratic primary voters) finds Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) taking a slight polling lead in the California Democratic primary over Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), former Vice President Joe Biden, and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg in what is consistently becoming a closely bunched field.

With two months to go before the Golden State primary is conducted but less than a month before early voting begins there on Feb. 3, the possibility of multiple candidates receiving portions of the state’s 415 first ballot delegates is becoming very real.

Sanders leads Warren, Biden, and Buttigieg by a 24-21-20-11 percent spread. Under party rules, a candidate must secure 15 percent of the statewide vote to earn at-large delegates. Therefore, Buttigieg must work to gain strength during the remaining time in order to reap the all-important mandated delegate commitments.

If he were to obtain 15 percent, and the others remained constant with these present percentages, the at-large delegate division would break 43 for Sanders and 38 for Warren, while Biden would earn 36 and Buttigieg 27 votes.

Should only the top three qualify for at-large delegate apportionment, Sanders would earn 53 votes, Warren 46, and Biden 45. Therefore, Buttigieg qualifying would significantly change the state and overall race because the large California delegation will be a major presence at the Democratic National Convention.

Scoring at-large delegate commitments is not the only way to earn votes, however. A larger total of 271 delegates will be awarded through the state’s 53 congressional districts. Each district, based upon its historical support performance for Democratic candidates, is awarded between 4 and 7 delegates, inclusive.

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New Arizona Data

By Jim Ellis

Arizona Senate candidate, retired astronaut Mark Kelly (D), and Sen. Martha McSally (R)

Jan. 10, 2020 — Public Policy Polling conducted a study of the Arizona electorate (Jan. 2-6; 760 registered Arizona voters) to test the highly important impending US Senate race between appointed Sen. Martha McSally (R) and retired astronaut Mark Kelly, the presumed Democratic nominee.

PPP also ran ballot tests involving President Trump paired individually against the major Democratic presidential contenders. Even though Arizona is a critical state in the 2020 presidential general election, the early projection numbers are not particularly salient because the contest has yet to begin in earnest, but the Trump results do provide a credibility foundation to analyze the PPP Senate numbers.

The Senate ballot test shows, as does every other previous survey of this race, that the McSally-Kelly battle is within the polling margin of error. The PPP numbers, at 46-42 percent in Kelly’s favor, project a four-point spread between the candidates, which is a bit more separation than revealed in past Arizona surveys.

Both Kelly and McSally have been near the top of national Senate fundraising charts, so it is clear that each will have plenty of resources to communicate their specific campaign messages in addition to expected independent expenditures that will come into the state to aid and attack both candidates. It is already clear that the Arizona Senate race will become a national campaign.

At this point, the Grand Canyon State campaign looks to be the Democrats’ best conversion opportunity, and a victory for them becomes even more important to offset what is likely a predicted loss for Sen. Doug Jones (D) in Alabama. With the Democrats needing a net gain of at least three seats, or four depending upon the presidential race outcome, every swing seat becomes critical for both parties.

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Castro Out; Bernie Brings in $34.5M

Julian Castro, 2020 Presidential candidate and Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, bows out of the race.


By Jim Ellis

Jan. 6, 2020 — Saying that it simply “isn’t our time,” former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro announced late last week that he is ending his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination now, exactly one month before the campaign’s first votes are cast in the Iowa Caucuses.

Castro, who served the final two-and-a-half years of the Obama Administration in the president’s cabinet after a five-year stint as mayor of San Antonio and previously being elected to one term on the city council, was one of the first candidates to enter the 2020 presidential campaign. Beginning the race as a little-known political figure despite serving in a national office, Castro couldn’t get his campaign untracked. He never came close to attaining high single digit support in any poll, even when including those from his home state of Texas.

On the money front, Castro raised slightly over $10 million for his national effort. Through Sept. 30, he attracted $7.6 million in financial backing with estimates of approximately $3.5 million for his final quarter in the race. Castro qualified for participation in four of the six national candidate forums, taking a major risk in one of them that proved to backfire.

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Impeachment Politics

By Jim Ellis

Dec. 20, 2019 — As the most recent polling from national research sources and in key states shows President Trump gaining political strength, the US House last night, on a virtual party line vote, approved the resolution to send the Articles of Impeachment to the US Senate for trial.

The vote was 229-198, with three Democrats voting against the articles and one Republican-turned-Independent, Michigan’s Justin Amash, supporting the measures. Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who represents the 2nd District of Hawaii, voted “Present”. Three members, two Republicans and one Democrat, were absent. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) will soon resign his seat due to pleading guilty to a federal campaign finance charge. Retiring Reps. Jose Serrano (D-NY) and John Shimkus (R-IL) were the others who did not vote. All present and voting Republicans opposed the impeachment measures.

Two of the three opposition Democrats were expected to vote no, Reps. Collin Peterson (D-MN) who represents the strongest Trump district in the country to elect a Democrat to the House, and New Jersey’s Jeff Van Drew who is about to leave his party to join the Republicans. The third no vote came from freshman Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), who represents the northern district in Maine that delivered its electoral vote to Trump in 2016 even though the state voted for Hillary Clinton. Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that choose to divide their electoral votes.

Two pollsters who had been showing national political support for the impeachment are now projecting a swing toward the opposite conclusion.

The CNN poll, conducted by their usual research partner, the SSRS firm, surveyed 1,005 adult respondents over the Dec. 12-15 period. A total of 45 percent of the respondents favored impeaching the president, while 47 percent said, “they don’t feel that way.” In contrast, their Nov. 21-24 survey found 50 percent favoring impeachment while 43 percent said they didn’t agree with the move. Previously, the CNN polls had reported positions consistently favoring impeachment since late September.

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Impeachment: First Political Clues

By Jim Ellis

President Donald Trump | whitehouse.gov

Dec. 16, 2019 — As we move toward the impeachment vote in the full House and the impending Senate trial to determine whether President Trump should be removed from office, a great deal of speculation exists about how voters will respond to this situation. A series of early December polls from the most critical swing states gives us a clue.

Firehouse Strategies/Optimus commissioned simultaneous polls within the Dec. 3-5 period in the top swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. As we remember, all of these places gave Trump a small victory margin in 2016. Phoenix-based pollster OH Predictive Insights conducted a poll of the Arizona electorate during the same period. Firehouse found sampling groups numbering between 551 and 610 respondents in the three states. OH used a slightly larger 628 person sample cell in the Grand Canyon State.

Both pollsters tested President Trump in each targeted state against former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and ex-New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg.

In all instances President Trump led his prospective opponent when individually paired. Since he had been trailing in similar ballot test responses from several previous polls in the Great Lakes States and was about even in Arizona, the change at the height of the impeachment proceedings suggests that he is seeing a net positive early return from the legal attack.

Of course, much could change before the process concludes, but this first data does provide us an interesting political snapshot as it relates to impeachment perceptions. As a rule, general election polling before the parties nominate their presidential candidates is usually irrelevant but, considering the present impeachment overlay, these numbers appear to be significant and particularly so because they are originating from critically important states.

For President Trump to win re-election, he must carry all five of the states in his 2016 coalition that typically vote Republican but have been trending closer to the Democrats since the last presidential election. Those are: Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. Florida and North Carolina are always swing states in virtually every election and will be again in 2020. To win, the president must first carry all of these aforementioned states. If so, he then would need to win just one of the Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin trio in order to yield a bare Electoral College majority.

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Buttigieg Tops New Hampshire Field

By Jim Ellis

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg

Dec. 13, 2019 — It has been clear for some time that South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is making a strong move in Iowa, perfectly understandable for a candidate hailing from the Midwest; but could an Iowa-New Hampshire sweep be in the forecast for the upstart national contender?

A new MassInc poll for WBUR radio, the public news station in Boston, finds Mayor Buttigieg, for the first time, posting a small lead in the Granite State. The survey (Dec. 3-8; 442 likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters) gives Buttigieg a slight 18-17-15-12 percent edge over former Vice President Joe Biden, and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), respectively, as a clear four-way race is beginning to crystallize for the first-in-the-nation primary.

The latest Iowa Caucus public polling, from Nov. 8 – Dec. 10 through four different survey research firms (Selzer & Company, YouGov, Civiqs, and Emerson College), finds Mayor Buttigieg either leading or tied in three of the studies.

Should such a trend come to fruition in February, we would see the underpinnings of not only Buttigieg becoming a legitimate contender, but a serious national four-way contest taking shape.

The New Hampshire poll is significant not only because it reveals a state base for Buttigieg but also finds that neither New England stalwart politicians Sanders nor Warren have clinched the state, as one might surmise. It was only four years ago when Sen. Sanders posted a 60 percent victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic New Hampshire presidential primary. At this point, now exactly two months from the Granite State primary vote, it would be reasonable to believe that both would be doing better than the MassInc survey and other recent polls suggest.

The MassInc/WBUR poll also provides another key data point. Despite former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s major media spending, apparently on a national basis, his favorability ratings among Democrats continue to languish. His personal index will have to substantially improve if he is to make a push to develop a five-way nomination campaign.

Yesterday, we covered a Monmouth University national poll that found Bloomberg being regarded as the most unpopular of the well-known Democratic candidates, and this MassInc/WBUR New Hampshire survey returns similar results.

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Shock Poll – Hillary Leading

By Jim Ellis

Hillary Clinton

Dec. 11, 2019 — The Harris polling organization in conjunction with Harvard University has just released what appears to be the first national poll to include former secretary of state and 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and it finds her pulling into a small lead when tested against the rest of the Democratic field.

Looking at the large sample survey (Nov. 27-29; 1,859 registered voters — 756 Democratic registered voters, online), Hillary would take a 21-20-12-9-5 percent lead over former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Without Hillary included, the field breaks 29-16-13-8-7 percent in favor of Biden, Sens. Sanders and Warren, Mayor Buttigieg, and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, respectively.

There are negatives associated with the methodology, however. First, an online poll is less reliable than a live-interview survey, and generally even less so than an automated response device study.

Additionally, the Harris/Harvard poll was taken during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, which again potentially skews the sample because so many people would not be included in the sampling universe because of deviations from their normal routines.

Third, the survey included former secretary of state and ex-US senator John Kerry within the field of candidates, and he received five percent support. That, too, could certainly skew the overall results to a degree because he is not running in the 2020 campaign.

Negatives notwithstanding, the fact that Clinton would already land among the leaders in the first of what will likely be several credible national surveys is significant. If anything, this data will lend more fuel to the fire that the former presidential nominee, secretary of state, US senator, and First Lady is seriously considering becoming a national candidate in 2020.

The Harris/Harvard poll again reiterates the most recent polling trend that, without Hillary being tested, Biden is establishing a clear lead but is nowhere close to the necessary 50 percent mark in order to secure nomination. The latest data also confirms that Sen. Warren dropped back into the pack after moving into a virtual tie with Biden six to 10 weeks ago. Sen. Sanders maintains his consistent supporters and is clearly going to be a top-tier factor as the race moves forward.

The candidates appearing to suffer the most from a Clinton re-emergence are Sen. Warren and Mayor Buttigieg. They both drop back significantly with her in the race, each falling into single digits. Biden and Sanders appear to hold most of their strength even with her in the field, which tells us that Warren and Buttigieg’s joint prospects will suffer if she were to return to active candidate status.

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