Biden vs. Clinton

[vcczar]

I was looking at old Dem primary polls from 2013-2015 to see if how close Biden was polling against Hillary Clinton, and to my surprise it wasn't close at all! Clinton had about 55%-60% on average to Biden's 15-20%. It was basically a Trump vs Desantis margin. 

I don't know why I thought it was closer than that because I remember being kind of shocked that Biden decided not to run, but this poll sort of makes it seem more rational of a decisions for him. That said, I remember people arguing that Biden was more electable than Clinton. 

Meanwhile in the early 2020 election polls, while Biden did lead Clinton in all but 1 major poll, the gap wasn't even close to as wide as the Clinton-Biden gap for the 2016 election. Much of this is because Bernie Sanders was polling almost as well as both Biden and Clinton leading up to 2020.

Speaking of Sanders, in his earliest polls for 2016 (in 2014), he's polling 0-2%. Crazy to think how much he surged. By April 2015, he was in double digits. He was routinely at 20%+ by June. Then at 30%+ by September. In October, he has his first poll in which he's beating Clinton. He only has about 12 other major polls for the rest of the primaries in which he's beating Clinton, but that's still impressive for a guy who once polled at 0%. 

I also forget that Sanders was something of the polling frontrunner in February 2020. This was also Warren's peak, in which she was about as strong as Biden. For whatever reason, progressives were at their high watermark that month. With a few polling exceptions, Biden was pretty much the frontrunner in all of the other months. 

[jnewt]

On 8/5/2023 at 7:36 PM, vcczar said:

I don't know why I thought it was closer than that because I remember being kind of shocked that Biden decided not to run, but this poll sort of makes it seem more rational of a decisions for him. That said, I remember people arguing that Biden was more electable than Clinton. 

I thought I remembered Biden outpolling Clinton in the months leading up to the debates. I guess that wasn’t the case, but I definitely remember lots of people wanting him to run. 

I completely understood at the time why he didn’t want to run though, with his son just having died and Clinton not being all that different from him ideologically.