The first new poll with Elizabeth Warren out of the race just told us a lot about Joe Biden vs Bernie Sanders

| 8:00 pm EST March 6, 2020
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When Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the race this week, she didn’t endorse anyone. At the time, Palmer Report pointed out that because Warren’s base is a mixture of people who like her for being far-left, and people who like her for being competent and savvy, her support was likely to be split between the two remaining candidates in some kind of fashion. Now we have the initial numbers.

The tricky part is that so many things are happening in the Democratic primary race right now that are having an impact on the polls. For instance, today’s new Morning Consult poll is the first nationwide primary poll without Warren listed as a candidate, but the last time it was conducted three days ago, both Warren and Mike Bloomberg were listed as candidates. The numbers have shifted radically.

With Warren and Bloomberg out of the race, Joe Biden is now at 54% while Bernie Sanders is at 38%. This gives Biden a commanding sixteen point lead. Warren and Bloomberg had 33 points of support between them in this poll when they dropped out. So where did those voters go? Biden gained 18 points, while Sanders gained 10. Because two people dropped out at once, it’s a little tricky to parse who went to whom. But based on what we know of these candidates, it’s fair to presume that these numbers mean most of Bloomberg’s supporters shifted to Biden, while Warren’s supporters were indeed split between Biden and Sanders.

The bottom line is that the departure of these two candidates has allowed Joe Biden to double the size of his nationwide lead in this new poll. Notably, just six percent of voters in this poll say they’re still undecided. So for Sanders to close the gap, he’d have to do more than just win over the remaining undecideds. He’d have to convince a number of current Biden supporters to switch to him.

As always, this is just one poll, and I’ve found that polling averages tend to be far more accurate. But during this fast moving point in the race, at the moment we only have one new poll which reflects Warren no longer being in the race. We’ll want to see more data in the coming days. But this poll strongly suggests that Warren’s exit hasn’t helped either of the remaining candidates.