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Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Polling Pennsylvania

Of all the states carried by Donald Trump in 2016, the three that are the biggest prizes are Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with PA being the biggest prize of all.  Texas and Florida have more electoral votes than PA, but those states are much more likely to go Republican than the Keystone State.  That status for PA makes today's poll from Quinnipiac all the more interesting.  Here are the head to head matchups found by Quinnipiac:

Biden  53         Trump  42

Sanders 50       Trump  43

Harris   45        Trump  45

Warren  47       Trump  44

Trump  46       O'Rourke  44

Buttigieg  45    Trump   44


Among Democrat voters, the current choice for the nominee is Biden 39; Sanders 13; Warren 8;  Harris 8; Buttigieg  6; Booker  5; O'Rourke  2;  Klobuchar 1, and the rest don't break 1%.

So what do these polls mean?  To answer that, you need to have just a bit of background.

First, Quinnipiac is a very anti-Trump pollster.  If you look at the polls done by Quinnipiac on the question of Trump's job performance, the average Q poll comes in about 6 points lower for Trump than the average of all other pollsters on the same question.

Second, in 2016, the polls all showed Hillary winning in PA rather easily.  During the week prior to the election, the polling average showed Hillary up by about 5%.  Trump carried the state. 

Third, it's a long, long way until November of 2020, and a candidate like Biden who just declared but who hasn't faced much opposition will always do better now than on election day.

That said, there are only two important data points in these polls.  One is that the polls show what little chance Cory Booker has to get the nomination.  Booker is a senator from New Jersey.  That means he gets coverage of the local media in Philadelphia.  Philadelphia and its suburbs have roughly 38% of the people in PA, but they have roughly half the Democrats in the state.  That means that half of the Democrats have been exposed to Booker for many years, and he's still polling only at 5%.  That's better than Booker does in some other states, but it is still disgustingly poor for a local guy.  Most likely, Booker will never make it to the PA primary but will have to withdraw after getting crushed in Iowa, New Hampshire and some other early states.

The second thing that the polling shows is that support for Bernie Sanders has really collapsed.  He isn't even getting one vote in seven among the Democrats. 

The polls also show that PA is likely to be close again in 2020 in the general election, but that's about it. 

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