About yesterday's polls...

[mak3cats]

I have been tracking polling on www.realclearpolitics.com (I set up a file sorted by location then by date).

Yesterday, RCP posted these results:

SC - Public Policy Polling shows Clinton 54%, Biden 24%, Sanders 9%, O'Malley 2%, Webb 2%, and Chafee 1%. A Gravis poll taken a little more than a month ago in SC (08/03/15) showed Clinton 78%, Sanders 8%, Biden 6%, O'Malley 1%, Webb 1%, and Chafee 1%. (Not the same pollster, so maybe not quite apples to apples.)

US - Monmouth shows Clinton 42%, Biden 22%, Sanders 20%, O'Malley 1%, Webb 1%, and Chafee 0%. The Monmouth national poll from a month ago (08/05/15) showed Clinton 52%, Sanders 16%, Biden 12%, O'Malley 2%, Webb 2%, and Chafee 0%.

So Biden is indeed making an impact, but it seems to me that he's drawing support from Clinton, not Bernie (who continues to gain, if slowly). Especially noteworthy IMO since the M$M is still maintaining their Bernie blackout.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. That's why I think it might be a good thing to get Biden in the race, heh. nt

[merrily]

2. OK, but Clinton's numbers were very high, too--until she actually started running.

She had very high approval as Secretary of State. As Presidential Primary candidate Clinton, her numbers have gone down.

We don't know whether or not Biden's numbers will trend similarly, but the current numbers are really for Vice President Biden, not for Presidential Primary candidate Biden. Historically, he has not done very well in the latter capacity--although now, as VP and as someone outpacing both Bernie and Hillary in the polls, his fundraising ability will be yooge.

What we do know is that ALL Bernie's numbers are for Presidential candidate Sanders because he had little name recognition before he started running. So, the more people hear him, the more his numbers should continue increase.

[mak3cats]

3. Just imagine this scenario (I'm a dreamer)...

...Biden continues to be cagey about actually running until right before the first debate (which will get more media attention in the run-up to it if there's a "will he or won't he" question about Biden's participation). Then Biden decides not to run. In the immediate aftermath, the debate gives the nation a chance to finally see and hear Bernie in all his glory. Will those supporting Biden throw their support to Hillary? I think not.

[Disabled15]

4. Having a hard time believing

Biden will run. Curious where those supporters will end up if that's the case. Half/half? Can't wait for the first debate. Once people see Bernie on a grand scale. Go Bernie!

[daleanime]

6. Just my opinion, but I don't think Biden wants to run....

it feels to me like a lot of people ($$$$$$) are trying to get him to. But the 'fire in the belly' isn't really there.

We just have to see if they manage to push enough.

No effect on Bernie at all unless Hillary drops at the same time, and I don't see that happening until she's mathematically eliminated. If Hillary's out of the race before the B's, most of her voters will go to Biden, but not all. If Biden announces that he's not running, or runs and drops out, 2/3rds of his support would be picked up by Bernie. Maybe more. And I hate to think about it, but if Bernie leaves the race ahead of them a large portion of his followers would just disappear. Many of them would pretty much give up on trying to change the system within the system.

Just my opinion of course.

[Demeter]

7. I think if Biden really wanted to run, he'd be running already

It's rather late in the game to start "thinking about it" now.

[n8dogg83]

5. I have been wary of polls taken this early in the race.....

I know some people don't like Nate Silver, but here is an excerpt from one of his recent articles about the primary polls:

In a sense, the primaries are a lot like the NCAA basketball tournament: You know there are going to be some surprises. The odds of every favorite winning every game in the NCAA tournament are longer than a billion-to-one against. And yet, in the end, one of the front-runners usually wins. (Since the men’s tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, all but three champions have been No. 4 seeds or better.)

So be wary of grand pronouncements about What It All Means based on a handful of “surprising” developments. Is Scott Walker’s campaign off to an “unexpectedly” bad start, for instance? Maybe. (I wouldn’t be thrilled if I were one of Walker’s strategists. I’d also remind myself that we have five months to go before the Iowa caucuses.) Even if you grant that Walker is having some problems, however, it would be stunning if all the Democratic and Republican campaigns were doing exactly as well as pundits anticipated. At any given moment, some campaigns are bound to be struggling to meet expectations, or exceeding them.

Similarly, while one might not have predicted that Bernie Sanders would be the one to do it, it was reasonably likely that some rival would emerge to Hillary Clinton. It’s happened for every non-incumbent front-runner in the past: Buchanan for Dole; Bill Bradley for Al Gore.

The other big difference between the general election and primaries is that polls are not very reliable in the primaries. They improve as you get closer to the election, although only up to a point. But they have little meaning now, five months before the first states vote.

It’s not only that the polls have a poor predictive track record — at this point in the past four competitive races, the leaders in national polls were Joe Lieberman, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton and Rick Perry, none of whom won the nomination — but also that they don’t have a lot of intrinsic meaning. At this point, the polls you see reported on are surveying broad groups of Republican- or Democratic-leaning adults who are relatively unlikely to actually vote in the primaries and caucuses and who haven’t been paying all that much attention to the campaigns. The ones who eventually do vote will have been subjected to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of advertising, had their door knocked on several times, and seen a half-dozen more debates. The ballots they see may not resemble the one the pollsters are testing since it’s likely that (at least on the GOP side) several of the candidates will have dropped out by the time their state votes.

(emphasis mine)

I think that these poll number reflect name recognition more than anything else. You have Trump, who gets breathless coverage in the media leading in the polls, even though he has the highest unfavorables. On the dem side you have Hillary and Biden who get substantial news coverage (although it seems most of Hillary's is negative these days). So yeah, this pretty much explains why these people are leading right now. I'm willing to bet the farm that the polls wont look that way come February 1st.