Sanders leads New Hampshire polls. Here’s why primary voters could still surprise us
New Hampshire polling shows a shifting race in the days leading up to Tuesday’s primary, which is the first contest in the nation after the bungled and delayed Iowa caucus results last week.
In releasing its last poll before New Hampshire’s primary, Boston-area TV station WBZ called the race “a rollercoaster ride, with one last hairpin turn in the final night of the exclusive WBZ/Boston Globe/Suffolk University tracking poll.”
That poll showed Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont leading with 27 percent, followed by “Pete Buttigieg, who had surged into a virtual tie with Sanders as the week ended, in second with 19 percent,” WBZ reported.
After Buttigieg (the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana) came Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota at 14 percent, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Vice President Joe Biden, who were each just below 12 percent.
Here’s more information on the primary’s frontrunners and the reliability of past polls — including how New Hampshire has produced surprising results in the past.
Which 2020 Democrat leads in New Hampshire polls overall?
The RealClearPolitics polling average of the Democratic primary in New Hampshire just before the election shows Sanders leading with 28.7 percent, followed by Buttigieg at 21.3 percent. Klobuchar has jumped to 11.7 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average after months in the single digits.
Warren — who polled ahead of both Sanders and Biden in the state for stretches in the fall — is at 11 percent with Biden.
“This is really about saving face and finishing third” for Warren, Biden and Klobuchar, pollster David Paleologos said Sunday as the Suffolk University tracking poll was released, according to the Boston Globe. “Klobuchar — who has to worry about her own campaign — could really put the nail in the coffin for whoever finishes fifth.”
Businessmen Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer, as well as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, are polling in the low single digits, according to RealClearPolitics.
Are New Hampshire polls reliable?
Not everyone is taking the polls at face value.
“This is not to knock the polls that are happening in New Hampshire, but I don’t trust New Hampshire polling leading up to the primary,” Chris Anderson, the founder and president of Beacon Research who conducts polling for Fox News, said on the TV network last week.
“It’s one of the most unpredictable weeks in the political cycle,” Anderson told Fox. “For one, it’s a small state, small electorate. People stop answering their phones because they’re getting called so much — response rates plummet.”
The primary is also open, meaning unaffiliated voters who might lean Independent or Republican can choose to vote in the Democratic presidential contest.
“You don’t know who is going to show up,” Anderson said, adding that “it’s very fluid. If we don’t have a surprise... I’ll be surprised.”
Have New Hampshire polls predicted primary winners before?
The reliability of New Hampshire primary polling has varied from contest to contest.
“2008 was one of the toughest years for pollsters in New Hampshire,” Steve Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group, told New Hampshire Public Radio after the 2016 election. “On the Democrat side, right before the primary it suddenly looked like Barack Obama had caught up to and overtaken Hillary Clinton, but then when the votes came in, Hillary Clinton still won.”
Eight years later, 2016 was a different story — with most polls correctly forecasting that Sanders would best Clinton in the Democratic race.
Republican polling that year was also reliable, according to the radio station.
“Even with the big messy field, they were within one or two points of every single candidate with one exception, which was Marco Rubio,” Koczela told New Hampshire Public Radio. “They really did a very good job overall of predicting the final percent of each candidate, which is I’d say quite a remarkable thing given the history.”
This story was originally published February 11, 2020 at 7:50 AM with the headline "Sanders leads New Hampshire polls. Here’s why primary voters could still surprise us."
