According to Nathaniel Rakich at FiveThirtyEight, Democratic primary voters are largely unsure who they support. Polling data suggests that no one candidate stands out from the pack, and with time ticking towards the early state primaries, the Democratic field is far from solid.
While the support for candidates like Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren holds steady between 20-30% nationally, candidates like Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg have bounced around from single digits to the mid-20% range. Current polling data has four candidates within 6% of each other in Iowa and New Hampshire. Based on the data, Democrats may not even make up their minds if one candidate sweeps both early state primaries—which could open the race to even more chaos.
While Joe Biden leads a convincing race nationally, a poor performance in both Iowa and New Hampshire could damage those numbers. Without that frontrunner status going into other primaries, those numbers could fall. With every passing week, polls suggest that Democrats are not convinced by his elder statesman status as other candidates cycle into and out of favor with voters.
The Democratic primary is far from over and increasingly looks like it’s heading towards an ugly finish.
Read more at FiveThirtyEight.
