Hillary 75%, Bernie 15%, Webb 4%, O'Malley 2%

[RichVRichV]

143. Couple issues with the polling.

The results are impressive, but I question them. Besides the fact that it's early and one has overwhelming name recognition. I can think of two flaws with the poll. The first is the sample size. Hillary has a massive majority of Democrats favoring her according to 247 people polled. That is a small sample size by any polling standard. I know it's anecdotal but half of the Democrats I know like her and the other half can't stand her. Far from the huge popularity rating these polls seem to give her. Polls usually trump anecdotal evidence, but we'll see how it plays out in a few months.


The other issue is one not specific to this poll. In order to maximize accuracy of polls, a lot of polling organizations only poll people "Likely to vote". They don't want non-voters skewing the results. Normally that's a good idea. The problem with that is that if Bernie wins it's going to be largely because of people "Not likely to vote" as well as cross over votes, not the people who normally vote in Democratic primaries. Are the polls even considering this?

This is why I believe Hillary had better retain good leads in the polls. Because I suspect the number of Bernie voters come election days are going to be substantially higher than the polls account for (and I expect his polling numbers to improve a lot). There's signs of a lot of disenfranchised people are starting to come back because of him, as well as first time young voters. If he ever gets close to even with her in the polls then she is in trouble.