Forecast on early and super Tuesday states ____ has the best chance of winning:

Joe Manchin visits Mike Bloomberg's campaign headquarters in New York

MR. MANCHIN GOES TO NEW YORK: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. V.) visited Michael Bloomberg's 2020 campaign headquarters in New York City over the holiday weekend, a source familiar with the visit told Power Up.

The visit — on which the Bloomberg campaign and Manchin's office did not respond to requests for comment — highlights the tricky political position for some centrist Democrats as liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) plows ahead as the top-polling candidate in a crowded race for the party's nomination.

Endorsement watch: The red-state Democrat raised eyebrows last week after telling Politico that he would not rule out endorsing President Trump in 2020 — even after voting to convict Trump on both charges of impeachment. Manchin's swing by Bloomberg's campaign HQ indicates that the moderate former New York mayor, who is surging in national polls of Democratic voters, may be emerging as a viable alternative.

Election Update: Bloomberg's Super Tuesday Gamble May Be Paying Off

It’s been a good 24 hours for Michael Bloomberg. Early this morning, on the brink of the deadline to do so, the former New York City mayor qualified for Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate thanks to a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll that gave him 19 percent of the national primary vote. He’s up to 16.3 percent in our national polling average — essentially tying him with former Vice President Joe Biden for the first time. However, he’s still 9 points behind front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders, and — by Bloomberg’s own design — it will be a couple weeks before we know how much actual voter support Bloomberg has.

That’s because Bloomberg has decided not to contest the first four states on the primary calendar (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina), instead focusing his massive financial resources on the 15 states and territories 1 that vote on Super Tuesday. Since he declared he was running in November, Bloomberg has built out a number of impressive field organizations and has aired millions of dollars’ worth of TV ads — and on Monday, we got a handful of state polls that suggest that investment may pay off. To wit:

>Monmouth University, one of the best pollsters in the biz, found Bloomberg in a virtual tie for first place in Virginia. He and Sanders each received 22 percent support, while Biden grabbed 18 percent. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg got 11 percent, Sen. Amy Klobuchar got 9 percent and Sen. Elizabeth Warren got 5 percent.

>The excellent SurveyUSA produced very similar results in a poll of next-door North Carolina for WRAL News. Bloomberg and Sanders netted 22 percent each, Biden received 20 percent, Buttigieg got 11 percent, Warren got 8 percent and Klobuchar got 5 percent. That said, SurveyUSA has some small house effects to consider, so our model interprets this more like a poll that showed Sanders and Bloomberg at 21 percent and Biden at 17 percent.

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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-bloombergs-super-tuesday-gamble-may-be-paying-off/

Bloomberg would sell business interests if elected president

Mike Bloomberg would sell the financial data and media company he created in the 1980s — which bears his name and made him a multibillionaire — if he is elected U.S. president, a top adviser said Tuesday.

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The only restriction Bloomberg would put on the sale is that it not be sold to a foreign buyer or a private equity company, O’Brien said. Bloomberg, a Democrat, is currently chief executive of the company.

“We want to be 180 degrees apart from Donald Trump around financial conflicts of interest,” O’Brien told The Associated Press. “We think it’s one of the biggest stains on the presidency, and Trump’s record is his refusal to disengage himself in his own financial interests. And we want to be very transparent and clean and clear with voters about where Mike is on these things.”


https://wsvn.com/news/politics/bloomberg-would-sell-business-interests-if-elected-president/