July 6 Poll Report

            Good morning everybody.  To the surprise of no one who has been paying attention, Joe Biden in yesterday’s poll substantially under-performed expectations based on previous polling.   Julian Castro picked up almost all of the fleeing Biden supporters, thus moving from 11^th to 9^th place among the 28 candidates being tested, essentially tied with the also-surging Andrew Yang, and, at least for now, a hair ahead of Yang.   This is yesterday’s poll:

            Castro +10, Abrams +3, Klobuchar +1, Biden negative 14.  Since yesterday:

            Joe Biden is down 69 points.  You can think whatever you want to think, but what I think is that Joe Biden (a) was never actually in first place, (b) is too old to do the job, and (c) was never up to the job when he was in his prime.  He doesn’t have the political skills to reach that level, unless he gets very lucky.  He’s a good man; he’s better qualified for the Presidency than 95 people out of 100.  But he’s just not sharp enough, not honest enough, not straight-forward enough and not a deep enough thinker to be that one guy in 50 million who OUGHT to be President, like Obama or Bill Clinton.  His scores are falling, not only in my poll—where he is now at 9%--but in the other polls, where he is now around 20%.   He will continue to fall until he reaches 4 or 5%, and probably drops out.

            That said, he COULD win the nomination.  What he needs to do to win the nomination is to find himself isolated in a one-on-one matchup with someone who is too radical, someone who represents cutting-edge Democratic impulses.  If Iowa and Vermont come down to Biden and somebody who advocates a universal income or something, Biden could win.   But I think it is hugely unlikely. 

            Julian Castro is up 58 points as a result of yesterday’s poll.  There is no doubt that this is a real phenomenon. 

            Elizabeth Warren is down 51 points as a secondary adjustment, and has dropped 113 points in two days.   I do not believe that Warren is actually losing support; I don’t believe she is actually gaining support now, either, but I don’t see evidence that she is losing support.  It’s a wrinkle in the polling.  We establish Warren’s position with respect to those she has been polled against.  Because they are leaders in the Democratic field, she has been polled repeatedly against Joe Biden, so when Biden’s score drops, Warren’s position estimate drops to the extent that our estimate of where she is depends on our estimate of where Biden is, thus, where she is relative to Biden.   Biden has dropped 7% since yesterday; Warren has dropped 2.6%, but her Support Score is so large that a 2.6% drop for her is 51 points.  It is probably not a real phenomenon.

            Coincidentally, Warren has dropped off the Green List for the first time since I added that feature to the daily reports.  The Green List is the list of candidates who are up 25% in the last 30 days, and who are highlighted in green on the chart below.   Warren has been green since I started doing that several weeks ago and is not today, which is not connected AT ALL to her little drop in the Support Score.  She dropped off the Green List because it has been 30 days since her surge in the polls pushed her from 1314 (June 4) to 1652 (June 6).  It was just her time to drop off of that list; her surge is over. 

            Pete Buttigieg is off 27 points as a secondary adjustment.   Buttigieg is having some actual challenges, but he is being polled today—now—and that poll is going almost exactly according to expectations so far.   Buttigieg may lose a couple more points tomorrow, but he’s been going 2-3-2-3-2-3 with Biden for a month, and with Biden dropping he is now a solid #2, and figures to stay there for the foreseeable future.

            Andrew Yang is up 23 points as a result of the removal of the May 17^th poll from the data considered relevant.   The May 17 poll was Gillibrand (43), Yang (25), Weld (20) and Schultz (12).   Yang is stronger now than he was then, so the removal of that poll moves his score forward, although he drops from 9^th to 10^th place because Castro has passed him on the outside.

            Stacey Abrams is up 18 points as a result of her surprising performance in yesterday’s poll.

            Kirsten Gillibrand is down 16 points as a result of the removal of the May 17^th poll from the positioning data.

            Jay Inslee is up 15 points as a secondary adjustment.  His 241 Support Score is the highest it has been since June 4, when he was at 271.

            Bill Weld is up 10 points as a result of the removal of the May 17 poll.

            Tulsi Gabbard is up 10 points, Jeff Flake up 7 points, John Hickenlooper up 7 and Kamala Harris down 9 points as secondary or technical adjustments.  

            These are the updated standings:

            Thank you for your interest.  If you are reading these every day and wondering how long Marianne Williamson can stay on the Green List. . .she’ll probably drop off on July 12.  We’ll poll her again on July 10.  If she does well on that poll she may be able to stay on the Green List, but she’ll have to do really well.