David Atkins had a good write-up yesterday of the Republican side of the new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll. The Democratic numbers are out today, and there’s a fair amount of buzz over Bernie Sanders earning 16%, the same number the Selzer poll showed for Elizabeth Warren back in January. Martin O’Malley, who was spending some significant time and effort in Iowa long before either Sanders or HRC showed up, was down at 2% the day after he formally announced.
But does the poll reveal, as the Register‘s article suggests, “some worries” for HRC? Hard to say. There are some dubious questions where Democrats are asked to predict whether this or that “scandal” is going to hurt her. Her horse-race support number, at 57%, is actually up a point from the last Iowa Poll. And for some real context, since some people persist in saying HRC’s “inevitability” was as strong going into 2008 as it is today, I’d point out that in the May 2007 Iowa Poll HRC was running third with 21% behind John Edwards with 29% and Barack Obama with 23%. I’d say she’s doing a bit better right now.
