Joe Biden just surged into the lead in the national polls

| 6:23 pm EST March 3, 2020
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We’ve been waiting to see the impact that Joe Biden’s massive blowout win in South Carolina, and the decision by Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg to drop out of the race and endorse Biden, would end up having on the overall primary race. Now we’re finally seeing national numbers, and it’s clear that a major shift is afoot.

There are two new national polls out today which show that Joe Biden has surged into first place nationwide. The two new polls are Morning Consult, which has Biden up by eight points, and the Hill, which has Biden up by five points. I always preach that we should rely on a broad polling average, not just one poll at a time. But all previous national polls included Pete and Amy as choices, so they must now be thrown out, leaving us just these two new polls to work with for now – and they have Biden in first place by an average of 6.5 points nationwide.

Here’s the breakdown: Pete, Amy, and Tom Steyer had 16 points among them nationwide. Based on these two new polls, Biden picked up about 12 of those points. Bloomberg picked up about four of those points. Sanders and Warren got none. Notably, while these polls were conducted after the news broke that Pete and Amy were dropping out, they appear to have been at least partly conducted before Pete and Amy endorsed Biden last night – so the Biden bump could end up being even larger.

Sanders will still likely get the majority of today’s Super Tuesday delegates, based on California alone. Most pundits will say this makes him the “frontrunner.” But at this point in the race, the current delegate count doesn’t take into account the demographic leanings of upcoming states. For instance, Biden is likely to win Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and other upcoming states in huge blowouts, similar to South Carolina.

As of this moment, FiveThirtyEight is predicting that by the time all fifty states have voted, Joe Biden will get about 350 more delegates than Bernie Sanders. These aren’t superdelegates; these are actual delegates who are assigned based on the popular vote in these states. Interestingly, this model points to no one getting a full majority of delegates, meaning we’d head to a brokered convention. But if Biden goes into the convention with the most delegates and the most actual popular votes, he’ll almost surely emerge with the nomination.

The bottom line is that Joe Biden is now the frontrunner, by 6.5 points. So long as he remains in first place in the national polls, he remains the frontrunner. For Bernie Sanders to become the frontrunner again, he would need to pull ahead in the national polling averages. If Biden supporters want to make sure Biden remains the frontrunner, they’ll have to keep working to get out the vote in upcoming states.