Large Poll Shows Lefty Pair Up Over Biden, Kamala

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Kamala Harris in 2010, when OC’s leading Dems did what they could to defeat her here. They tried again in 2016. This time, they probably don’t even need to try.

First of all, thanks to Scott Lay at The Nooner — to whose website you should subscribe if you have the money, because he’s thinking of folding up his tent for lack of subscribers and if that happens we’ll all be poorer for it — for the pointer to the good stuff in the PPIC (“Public Policy Institute of California”) poll on both local politics and the upcoming Presidential Primary.

The PDF showing all residents of California (including adult non-voters) is here and the PDF showing likely voters — the only people who politicians care about besides donors — is here.  In the former, you’ll get some approval questions about Governor Newsom and the State Legislature; income, wealth, and class; potential ballot propositions; fires and power shutoffs; the homeless; national politics, and more.  In the latter, you’ll get those for likely voters along, as well as results for who people support for President (first and second choice!), what issues they care about most, likely propositions, and much more.

There’s fodder for dozens of stories here, especially given the breakdowns into subcategories (and the fact that they interviewed enough voters — over 1,100 to make those subgroup estimates meaningful!), but the big one is the bottom line: for whom do Democratic primary voters plan to vote for their party’s nominee?

One problem is that that phrase “Democratic primary voters” can mean two very different things: Democrats who plan to vote in their party’s primary, and anyone who plans to vote in the Democratic primary (including NPPs — and that includes Republicans who switched to NPP and sought a Democratic ballot — who aren’t Democrats but will be voting in the party primary regardless.  (I wrote about this issue with my recent piece on whether relatively Trump=frienfly Tulsi Gabbard might win the Democratic primary with non-Democratic votes.)  So let’s tackle that question first.

It turns out that they did this the right way — asking all voters who planned to vote in the Democratic primary, and then giving percentages both with and without including the non-Democrats — and those percentages are virtually identical.  For each of the candidates asked about — Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang — the percentages for the 503 likely primary voters and the 445 likely Democratic primary voters who are registered Democrats — are exactly the same, except for Warren doing 1% better when non-Democrats are excluded.  Yes, the non-Dems group is only 13% as big — 1/7.7 the size — as the Dems group, and it makes up only 11.5% of the entire sample — but for it to show almost almost no effect on percentages is pretty wild.  For comparison, 90 voters were neither White nor Latino — in other words, mostly Blacks, South and East Asians, Aboriginal Americans, and Pacific Islanders — and they moved the numbers all over the place: Biden 4% worse. Sanders 2% better, Yang 9% better (presumably due to East Asian voters), and Harris and Booker each 1% worse.  (Again, that’s with Blacks included.)

OK, you’ve suffered through enough commentary, so here are the numbers on where the Democratic primary voters stand on the Presidential nominee:

Biden 24%
Warren 23%
Sanders 17%
Harris 8%
Buttigieg 7%
Yang 5%
Booker 1%
Klobuchar 1%
Steyer 1%
Someone else (specified) 4%
Don’t know (volunteered) 9%

Obviously, over the next 77 days, a lot will happen.  A strong showing in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and/or South Carolina may scoot someone up for Super Tuesday (or a bad one tear them down.)  Of the 87% who plan to vote for one of these nine candidates 40% are for the two leading lefties, Warren and Sanders, and 33% are for the four self-pronounced moderates (Biden, Buttigieg, Booker, and Klobuchar.)  I don’t know where to classify Harris or Steyer in that dichotomy, and may never know how to classify Yang.

How about people’s second choices?

Biden 16%
Warren 20%
Sanders 19%
Harris 10%
Buttigieg 13%
Yang 4%
Booker 4%
Klobuchar 2%
Steyer 3%
Someone else (specified) 4%
Don’t know (volunteered) 7%

It’s Warren and Sanders for 39% combined; the four moderates 35%, with Harris and Steyer doing a lot better on the question that won’t help them.

As I said, you can play with these figures all day.  Here’s the gender gap between these nine candidates (positive = more males):

Biden +11%
Warren -4%
Sanders +2%
Harris -1%
Buttigieg +4%
Yang -4%
Booker 0%
Klobuchar 0%
Steyer -1%
Someone else (specified) +4%
Don’t know (volunteered) -7%

(So women are much more undecided then men.  Moderates and conservatives are 7 times as undecided as liberals (14% vs. 2%.)  Orange County and San Diego (11%) are almost twice as undecided as Los Angeles (6%), which is twice as undecided as San Francisco (3%)

Another fun fact:

Biden is 10 points higher among home owners than renters.  Sanders is 10 points higher among renters than owners.  Warren scores exactly the same between the groups.

All right, that’s enough for now.  Do your own Combing through the data and leave your insights in the comments!