Sanders Gains in Post-New Hampshire Polling

Sen. Bernie Sanders has improved his standing in national polls since his victory in the New Hampshire primary, raising the possibility that he could amass a commanding or even insurmountable delegate lead on Super Tuesday in two weeks.

Sanders held 30% of the vote, nearly double his nearest rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, in an average of three post-New Hampshire live-interview national surveys sponsored by ABC/Washington Post, NBC/WSJ and NPR/PBS/Marist College. The polls also had good news for President Donald Trump, whose approval ratings have hit the highest point since the early days of his term.

The results suggest that Iowa and New Hampshire not only helped Sanders but also left his moderate opposition in disarray heading into Wednesday night’s debate in Nevada, with five candidates between 8% and 16% of the vote.

Joe Biden, the former front-runner who finished fourth and fifth in the two early states, has lost half his support since the ABC/Washington Post poll conducted just before the Iowa caucuses. On average, he held just 15% of the vote, leaving him essentially tied with former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg for second place. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was not much further behind at 13% in an average of the three polls.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota improved to only 10% and 8% of the vote across the three polls, despite their strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. This left them behind Biden and Bloomberg and even further away from consolidating moderate voters before Super Tuesday on March 3.

Bloomberg, whose huge advertising campaign could help him emerge as Sanders’ leading rival, has gradually gained in national polls since entering the race in November. But Bloomberg held an average of just 16% across the three surveys, suggesting that he has made relatively few gains over the past 10 days, when national polls first showed him rising into the midteens. It raises the possibility that his momentum has been blunted over the past week, perhaps by attacks on his record.

At least for now, the polls leave Bloomberg well short of enough support to block a decisive win for Sanders on Super Tuesday. The divided field even raises the possibility that Sanders might win a near-majority of delegates with less than one-third of the vote, potentially giving him an all but insurmountable pledged-delegate lead and making him a favorite to win an outright majority of pledged delegates as well.

The Democratic Party awards delegates proportionally among candidates who earn at least 15% of the vote in a state or congressional district. At the moment, Sanders is the only one who would be expected to clear the 15% threshold in nearly all states or districts. He would be positioned to earn an outright majority in many cases, including when he might be the only candidate to breach 15% and win all of the delegates at stake in a jurisdiction.

A Public Policy Institute of California survey Tuesday showed Sanders with a lead of 32% to 14% against Biden, putting him in position to claim a clear majority of delegates from the nation’s largest delegate prize.

Bloomberg has shown more strength in recent state polls in the South, where he has been tied or ahead in recent polls of North Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma and Arkansas. But Sanders has been highly competitive in these states and would still amass a meaningful number of delegates there.

The recent polls results also undermine the argument that Sanders has a hard ceiling on his support. He claimed a lead over Bloomberg, 57% to 37%, in a hypothetical one-on-one race in the NBC/WSJ poll, suggesting that his opposition might not inevitably coalesce around a single candidate, if one ever emerged.

Instead, the growth in Sanders’ support makes it easy to imagine how he could run away with the nomination over a divided field. Many of his opponents have an incentive to attack one another rather than Sanders. And Bloomberg has been a focal point of attack this week, leaving Sanders relatively unscathed. Bloomberg might also be the focal point of the debate tonight.

The primary calendar offers Sanders’ rivals few natural opportunities to consolidate their support. Instead, he is heavily favored in Nevada, a state full of working-class, urban and Hispanic voters — the type who have generally preferred Sanders in the early states and national polls. And while South Carolina, with a large proportion of African American voters, is less favorable to Sanders, the state could wind up further fracturing the field by propping up a faltering Biden or elevating an additional candidate, Tom Steyer, who held a mere 2% in the recent national polls.

For many candidates, the debates represent their only realistic opportunity to fundamentally improve their position. If anything, the effect of Bloomberg’s colossal ad spending — including the possibility that it could be turned to attack Sanders — looms as the single likeliest factor to reshape the trajectory of the race in the final two weeks before Super Tuesday.

Yet at the same time, the polls suggest that the Democratic path to the presidency may be tougher than ever against Trump, whose approval ratings have improved to well within striking distance of reelection. They have reached 45.8% among registered voters in the FiveThirtyEight tracker, while his disapproval has fallen to 50.1%.

The president’s improved standing is consistent with a long-term tendency for presidential approval ratings to increase before reelection, whether because of a strong economy or a helpful contrast with their rivals. There may also be factors specific to this president at play, like his recent acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial.

In a hypothetical head-to-head general election matchup, Sanders led Trump by an average of 4 points among registered voters in the new polls. Biden led by an average of 7 points, and Bloomberg by 5.

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The NBC/WSJ poll found that a combined 67% of voters said they either had reservations or were “very uncomfortable” with a socialist candidate, while 57% answered similarly about a candidate who had a heart attack in the past year. (Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist and had a heart attack last fall.) Forty-one percent had similar reservations about a self-funding billionaire.

Buttigieg and Klobuchar led the president by somewhat weaker 3- and 2-point margins. The better-known Warren led Trump by just 1 point, the weakest of the Democratic candidates tested.

The president might be better positioned against all of his possible rivals than these surveys might imply. These polls represent registered voters nationwide, rather than likely voters in the battleground states likeliest to decide the presidency.

It is far from obvious that a 4-point lead for Democrats among registered voters nationwide would translate to victory among actual voters in the relatively white, working-class Midwestern battlegrounds.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .