Bloomberg Poll: Clinton 33% Biden 25% Sanders 24% nationally

[WI_DEM]

Clinton, once the prohibitive front-runner, is now the top choice of 33 percent of registered Democrats and those who lean Democrat, the poll shows. Biden places second with 25 percent and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is at 24 percent. The other three Democratic candidates combined are the top choice for less than 4 percent of that base.

A closer look at the sample of the Democrat and Democrat-leaning poll respondents shows that nationally, Clinton is better liked by women than men—74 percent to 64 percent—while Biden's favorability is closer to gender-neutral, with 81 percent for women and 79 percent for men. The survey also found those who are married or have children under the age of 18 were more likely to give Biden favorable ratings than Clinton.

The poll of 1,001 adults, including 375 registered Democrats and Democrat-leaners, was conducted Sept. 18-21 for Bloomberg Politics by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa. The overall sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, while the Democratic sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.1 percentage points.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-09-23/bloomberg-poll-joe-biden-now-top-presidential-choice-for-1-in-4-democrats

[Godhumor]

2. Was just looking at the crosstabs of the poll

It was conducted by the very well respected Selzer & Co.

Anyway, must interesting thing to me is Bernie is still in line with the mid20s he has shown in literally every single poll in the past two months. This is the first time Biden has been in second place in any polling and it looks like his support comes almost entirely from the Clinton camp. The exact percentage is unknown since there was no second choice question.

Unfortunately there is no recent poll by Bloomberg to see how numbers have changed.

35% of the Democratic sample say they still don't have an opinion on Bernie.

80% have a favorable opinion of Biden (Much due to the "Anyone not running looks better until they run" factor, I am sure.).


Interesting poll that is definitely taking a different track than any other recent ones, as Biden has never done so well anywhere else.

[kenn3d]

13. Definitely interesting...

Some things of note from my list are also on yours:

1. Biden has never done so well anywhere else.
2. Clinton is seemingly down more than is explained by Biden's gain. (Agreed, Sanders shows pretty stable here despite very small uptick in his composite.) Very hard to know because... see 3.
3. No other Bloomberg polls on either RCP or HuffPolster
4. This poll resulted in RCP spread narrowing by 2.7pts to Clinton +17.4

So I wonder why HuffPollster has not aggregated this poll? (yet?)
**EDIT** HuffPollster has now included the Bloomberg data. Revised spread narrows to Clinton +16.7

And btw, I've also be trying to understand this funky polling thing from Reuters:
http://polling.reuters.com/#!response/TR131/type/smallest/dates/20140918-20150922/collapsed/false

Reuters 5-day Rolling
SEPTEMBER 22ND, 2015 (5-DAY ROLLING)
976 Responses (No Filters)
Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton 30.2%
Ver. Sen. Bernie Sanders 25.8%
Vice President Joe Biden 12.7%

The raw numbers change everyday?
Does anybody have any insight to share on this one? Godhumor?

[Godhumor]

14. The Reuters poll I would just ignore

It is a constant open online poll that a volunteered group of people respond to each day (Sample is randomly selected from the volunteer population). It doesn't meet scientific criteria and is not included in any aggregated site.

[kenfrequed]

3. He isn't running

We really need to stop paying attention to this.

[WI_DEM]

4. unfortunately, until the vice president gives a

emphatic no that he isn't running it isn't going to end the speculation.

[kenfrequed]

5. It actually kind of helps Clinton.

By keeping some people on the fence longer it sort of keeps them from candidate shopping and it will invariably feed into the "inevitable" campaign.

[magical thyme]

7. not necessarily. keeping them on the fence keeps them open to possiblities.

other possibilities, too.

[kenfrequed]

8. ah.. the half-full approach

There are days I don't like being a pessimist.

[magical thyme]

6. and yet he keeps that door open and teased us with the possibility.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. The "Not as bad as Hillary" candidate (soon) is splitting the Decaf Dem vote.

[ram2008]

10. Selzer is the best pollster

I wonder if this explains Hillary's Keystone change of heart yesterday.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. well OBVIOUSLY IT'S ALL OVER. HILLARY WINS!

put away your dashikis, kids.

[DCBob]

12. Amazing how well Biden is doing without even declaring or campaigning.

[HerbChestnut]

15. I don't think it should be that much of a surprise.

He's the sitting VP behind a successful president, which brings with it both name recognition and a positive association with Obama's legacy. He's a likeable guy. He's been in the news constantly for the last couple of months. And I hate to say this because it's pretty cold, but his son's death is probably helping him as well. There's a lot of sympathy for him, which undoubtedly helps his favorables. He also hasn't been on the campaign trail and therefore open to scrutiny. Once he officially declares and starts campaigning I think you'll see his numbers rise initially but stabilize once people get used to him being an actual candidate. After that it'll be a three way race between him, Sanders, and Clinton.