June 13 Poll Report

            Good morning.  Since I only base my positioning estimates on the last 50 polls, I have removed from the data the poll of April 23, the results of which were Cory Booker (37%), Colonel Bernie Sanders (34%), Bill Weld (19%) and Jeff Flake (11%).   At that time Booker appeared to be much stronger than he does now.  The removal of that poll hurts Booker, down 8 points today, and helps Sanders, who is up 11 points and has pulled back ahead of Klobuchar, with whom he has been neck-and-neck.  Booker and Sanders were the only candidates who moved by as much as five points since yesterday’s standings, -8 and +11.

            Booker’s numbers crashed in early May, but he has been stable since then.  But he is, I think, about to go through three consecutive bad updates—today, tomorrow, and the next day.   In today’s poll, which will be reflected in tomorrow’s update, he is facing a very strong group, the three leading Democratic candidates (Warren, Biden and Buttigieg).  He only has to get 10% in that group to hold his position, but with 1,200 votes in he is far below that, so. . .could be a bad today.   And the day after that, we’ll be removing from the data the poll of April 25, in which Booker beat Klobuchar and Gillibrand by far wider margins than he could likely repeat now, so.  . .another bad day.  

            John Delaney did really well in yesterday’s poll, getting 39% against a predicted 29%. 

Don’t know why he did so well; it may be that his performance at the San Francisco meeting, where he was booed, has actually helped him more than it hurt him.    There were 628 voters in yesterday’s poll, so he over-performed by about 63 votes.  He took points from all three of the other candidates in that poll.  There weren’t very many points on the table in that poll, but it may signal a rally for Delaney, who had slipped from the mid-70s down to 58.   He’s back up to 62, which is 62/100ths of one percent.  Not suggesting he is about to knock Joe Biden out of the race.   These are the updated standings:

            Wayne Messam, expected to get 12% in the poll of tail-end candidates, failed to get even that, and has established a new record low.  The total number of points that moved since yesterday is only 39, which is the second-lowest ever.   There was one day before I reached the level necessary to start removing old polls where the outcome of the day’s poll almost exactly matched the previous standings, so only 21 points moved on that day.  Thanks for reading.