The latest news on the Democratic presidential primaries, we are told, is that Senator Elizabeth Warren is in a “statistical tie” with Joe Biden.
That, indeed is true of the Economist/YouGov poll of 1,500 adults, taken August 10 through 13, which shows Biden at 23 percent support among those polled, and Warren at 20.
But here’s the problem for Warren: The RealClearPolitics Average shows that Biden is still ahead, substantially in some cases, and that Warren isn’t anywhere near a statistical tie.
The Real Numbers
Much as the media might like to see another woman take on Trump, the numbers today don’t show that happening. A Fox News poll of 1,013 voters taken August 11 through 13, for instance, shows something far different: Biden beats Warren by 9 points, 31-20.
And that poll, not the Economist/YouGov poll, is more in line with the rest of the polling data in the RCP average, which has Biden 13.2 points ahead of Warren
The RCP average shows Biden at 30.5 percent, with Warren following at 17.3. Sanders has dropped to third at 16.3, and Kamala Harris to fourth with eight percent. But at least Warren can at least claim to have surpassed Kamala Harris, whose fortunes appear to have wafted away like a cloud of acrid pot smoke. None of the other candidates are above six percent.
After Fox, what do the rest of the polls show? The Hill/Harris X poll of August 9-10 puts Biden 11 points ahead of Warren, 31-20. Sanders is 15 points behind.
Politico/Morning Consult of August 5-11 also has Biden on top, 33-20 over Sanders, with Warren wheezing in at 14, a mere 19 points behind.
Quinnipiac of August 1-5 shows Biden leading Warren 32-21, with Sanders in third at 14.
Last, SurveyUSA of August 1-5 gives Biden 33 points to Sanders’ 20 and Warren’s 19.
All of which means that Warren is not “statistically tied” with Biden but instead tied with Sanders. Ahead of Sanders by a point, she leads in three of the most recent polls and he leads in three.
Biden remains in firm control of the race, as he has been since October. Not a single RCP average has shown Biden out of first place.
State Polls
The state polls posted at RealClearPolitics show the same thing. In Iowa, RCP has Biden ahead of Warren by nine points, 25.3-16.3, with Harris in third 14.3
Biden leads Sanders by 2.5 points in New Hampshire 21.8-19.3.
In Nevada, Biden leads Sanders by 14.5, 32.8-18.
At 38 percent in South Carolina, Biden leads Sanders by 23.7.
Even more significantly, Biden is ahead of candidates in their home states or those they represent in Congress.
He has a slim 2.3-point lead over Harris in California, 23.3-21.
Beto O’Rourke places second to Biden in Texas, 27-16.8, a deficit of 10.2.
In Massachusetts, Warren comes in third at 12, more than 10 points behind Biden’s 22.5. She’s not even head of Sanders, who has 16.
What the Polls Mean
None of this means Biden is a sure winner, as Hillary Clinton learned in 2016. The polling data in that year’s presidential election had Clinton ahead of Donald Trump all the way through the election day.
As The New American reported in June, those polls were terribly wrong. Clinton defeated Trump in 85 percent of the 300 polls conducted between May 2015 and election day 2016.
Of course, Clinton won the popular vote, so the polls were, indeed, accurate on that count. But even then, Clinton’s margin of victory was just 2.1 percent, and Trump, of course, received 306 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232. National polls don’t take into account how votes fall in the states, and no state or national poll can account for voters who lie about what they’ll do in the voting booth.
The certain predictions of a Clinton victory, which the leftist media reinforced from the day Trump won the nomination, likely accounted for the hysterical reaction of Clinton supporters when Trump won.
Assured their candidate would easily prevail in something of a landslide, Clinton partisans were thunderstruck.
That could happen to Biden as well.
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