Bloomberg rises to 4th place in new national poll
Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg continues to rise in the Democratic primary field, according to a new nationwide poll out Wednesday, as he plows his personal fortune into widespread advertisements for his last minute bid for the White House.
The Monmouth University poll found Bloomberg polling at 9 percent nationally among Democratic voters — good for a distant fourth place among a still-crowded field.
The former mayor's showing in the poll represents an increase of 4 points since a Monmouth survey conducted in December and the highest he’s registered in a national poll since jumping into the race late last year.
A separate CNN nationwide poll also released Wednesday morning, however, showed Bloomberg in fifth place with 5 percent support.
Outside of Bloomberg’s rise, the Monmouth poll shows a stable race at the top of the field with less than two weeks to go before Iowa, the first nominating contest of the 2020 race.
Former Vice President Joe Biden leads the pack with 30 percent, up 4 points from a month ago. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is in second, rising 2 points to 23 percent, followed by Warren, who dropped 3 points to 14 percent.
Bloomberg’s surge puts him atop the next tier of candidates, jumping former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is down 2 points to 8 percent. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar rose 1 point since December, polling at 5 percent, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang remains at 3 percent, with no other candidate breaching 1 percent. Six percent of Democratic voters polled said they were still undecided.
“With the exception of Bloomberg’s entry, this race looks pretty much like it did six months ago,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute. “But that stability masks the potential for sizable swings once the first contests are held. Iowa and New Hampshire will play a major role in shaping national voter preferences.”
Bloomberg has made quick work of his short time in the race, racking up a series of congressional and local endorsements in just a few months. The former mayor, who only announced last November that he would run for president, has broken with convention and will skip the retail politics-heavy Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary in favor of competing in later states.
But his decision to eschew donations and self fund his campaign — he’s already dumped $248 million into TV advertisements, flooding the airwaves nationally — means he won’t appear on any primary debate stage for as long as the DNC requires candidates to meet a grassroots donor threshold. The approach has rankled his opponents, drawing accusations that he is attempting to buy the presidency.
The Monmouth University poll was conducted by telephone from Jan. 16-20 among a national sample of 847 registered voters, including 372 voters who identify as Democrats or Democrat-leaning. Results from the full survey have a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.4 percentage points, while results among Democratic and Democratic leaning voters have a margin of error of plus-or-minus 5.1 percentage points.
