Sanders Easily Wins Nevada, Stakes Claim As New Frontrunner

WEEKLY SNAPSHOT

Going in to the Nevada Caucus, the main questions were if Joe Biden could rebound, it Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar would do well in a non-90% Caucasian state, and if Elizabeth Warren could capitalize on her strong debate performance. Almost lost in all the media prognositcations was Bernie Sanders, who was rpoundly expected to win, but only be an "expected" margin, and that the "real battle" was for second place.

Whoops. A whole lot of political pundits have some egg on their face, as not only did Sanders win as expected, he handidly won the state. And he did it by expanding beyond his core base of young people and left-wing progressives. He won with men, with women, with Hispanics (by an overhwhelming advantage), voters 45-64, and those with or without college degrees.

Sanders has now won the popular vote in the first three contests, and has a delegate lead of 31-22 over Buttigieg. He led all candidates with 46.6%, more than doubling second-place finisher Joe Biden (19.2%). Roudning out the top five, Buttigieg claimed 15.4%, Warren tallied 10.3%, and Klobuchar finished a distant fifth with just 4.5% support from Nevada voters.

So what does this all mean? Sanders is in the drivers seat at the moment. If he takes second (or even wins) South Carolina, he'll be positioned about as well as can be for Super Tuesday. And the fear among many Sanders supporters that Michael Bloomberg was swoop in and claim a bunch of delegates on Super Tuesday have been largely calmed after Bloomberg's disatrous debate performance this past week. 

And speaking of South Carolina and Super Tuesday...

NEW STATE POLLS 

Our State Polling page breaks down the states into two relevant sections: the first caucuses and primaries in February, and then the "Super Tuesday" primary on March 3rd. 

The next (and last) of the early states in the South Carolina primary this coming Saturday, where Biden and Steyer are betting the house. The former, in a effort to "right the ship", the latter in an effort to appear even remotely relevant. For Sanders, it's his first real test to see if he can improve on his minority voter numbers and support, which will be a key test of his "electibility" in the eyes of many voters. 

We've had four new polls just this week in South Carolina, which shows that the race is much tighter than it was just a month ago.  

	Courier	ECU	Change	UMass	Winthrop		Average
Biden	28	28	23	23	24		25.2
Sanders	20	20	23	21	19		20.6
Steyer	14	14	20	13	15		15
Buttigieg	8	8	15	11	7		9.8
Warren	7	7	9	11	6		8
Klobuchar	2	7	8	9	5		5.6

And once the dust settles from South Carolina, it's on to Super Tuesday. And as such, we've had a number of new polls to add from California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia. We also have new polls from Florida and Illinois (March 17), and Georgia (March 24). 

UPDATED NATIONAL RANKINGS

As for the national numbers, we have eight new polls to add to the national average, which now takes a back seat to the state polling as we are into the state-by-state voting phase of the nomination process. 

• Sanders -- 26.4%
• Biden -- 18.3% 
• Bloomberg -- 15.7%
• Warren -- 12.2%
• Buttigieg -- 10.1%
• Klobuchar -- 6.1%

Sanders has clearly cemented his status as the front-runner, hitting his highest support level so far, while Biden tumbles right as Bloomberg continues to climb in spite of his debate performance (though a second bad night could doom him). 

All of the other remaining candidates were below 3% or did not show in the national polling from the aggregate of the past ten national polls.