National:
Bloomberg-1: Despite having a universally-panned debate performance, Bloomberg is still picking up congressional endorsements. He was endorsed by Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Nita Lowey of New York and Pete Aguilar of California yesterday, though I imagine they were decided beforehand and are just being announced now to set a narrative of Bloomberg “continuing to gain” or something similar. None of those 3 are particularly surprising endorsers for a candidate like Bloomberg.
Bloomberg-2: Bloomberg has come under fire recently for being endorsed by Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, as his wife is on the Bloomberg campaign payroll. Insert joke here about “How Detroit politics are done”
Florida-GE: A University of North Florida poll has Bloomberg leading Trump 50-44 in the state, with Trump effectively tying or narrowly leading the other Democrats. The poll also has Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott with tepidly positive approval ratings in the state.
Florida-Dem: In the D primary, Bloomberg running 5 points ahead of Biden 32-27 with Sanders stuck at 11% and no one else in double-digits. Florida is probably Sanders’s worst state in the country demographically, but that is still a surprisingly strong 2-man race given how wide open the field is nationally.
MN/TX/NC-Dem: A UMass Lowell poll of these three states has Klobuchar up 27-21 over Sanders in her home state, Sanders leading Bloomberg 23-19% in North Carolina, and Sanders leading Biden 23%-20% in Texas.
NV-Dem: A new Emerson poll of Nevada Democrats has Sanders leading with 30% of the vote followed by Buttigieg at 17%, Biden at 16%, and Klobuchar, Warren, and Steyer rounding out the relevant candidates with 12, 11, and 10% respectively.
Quin Polls: A new slate of Quin polls have Trump leading comfortably in Wisconsin by 7-11 points, but trailing in Michigan by 1-5 points and trailing in Pennsylvania by 6-8. It’s an odd set of polls for a trio of states that have generally followed similar political trajectories in the last 2 decades, and I can’t think of a particularly good reason why they would have diverged this much, so we throw them all on the pile I guess.
SC-Dem: A poll of Palmetto State Democrats has Joe Biden still leading with 24% of the vote over Bernie Sanders’s 19% with Steyer in 3rd place at 15% and no one else even close to relevant. I’m not sure if limping to a low single-digit win in SC can save Biden’s campaign hopes, but I’m pretty sure he can’t survive losing to Sanders in his “firewall state”, so he better hope he can head into the race stronger than he’s looked the past 2 weeks.
Sanders: Chris Matthews continues to talk about how much of a disaster a Bernie Sanders candidacy would be for the Democrats, comparing him to George McGovern’s 1972 disaster and saying Sanders would lose 49 states to Trump. Is it weird that I kinda want to know which state he thinks Sanders would win? Cause its hard for me to see Trump losing Vermont in an election where he’s carrying California.
Trump: Gallup continues to find Trump narrowly above-water for the first stretch of his entire presidency. This is mostly due to having sky-high approvals with Republicans, but also because Gallup is finding more people self-ID as Republicans than Democrats for the first time since the Bush43 Presidency….