Mike Blake/Reuters
- Former Vice President Joe Biden is surging in polls, seeing his highest satisfaction numbers among Democratic voters this entire cycle.
- Simultaneously, voters have sharply soured on Sen. Bernie Sanders. He's seen a dip coinciding with Biden's rise.
- From Feb. 20 to March 6, Biden's satisfaction popped from 47% to 61%, according to Insider's recurring national SurveyMonkey audience poll.
- Bernie's satisfaction dropped from 63% to 54%.
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After months of questions looming over his campaign as a vulnerable front runner, former Vice President Joe Biden is enjoying his highest satisfaction numbers among likely Democratic primary voters polled by Insider.
Biden's surge has taken the wind out of Sen. Bernie Sanders' sails, with the 2016 runner-up having enjoyed consistent momentum ever since recovering from his heart attack in early October.
The change was clear in Super Tuesday's results, which overwhemingly favored Biden.
For the past several months, Insider has been conducting a recurring SurveyMonkey Audience poll to track the state of the 2020 Democratic primary field. You can download every poll here, down to the individual respondent data. (Read more about how the Insider Democratic primary tracker works here).
Insider has asked respondents who said they'd vote in their state's Democratic primary to select any of the contenders that they would be satisfied with as nominee.
Typically it's ideal to wait to aggregate these figures, but the week-to-week shift between the poll conducted immediately before the South Carolina primary and the poll conducted several days after Super Tuesday was pronounced.
Between Feb. 20 and March 6, Biden's satisfaction among Democrats who knew of him jumped from 47% to 61%, while Sanders' satisfaction fell from 63% to 54%.
More concerning for Sanders, the fraction of Democrats who would not be satisfied in the event he took the nomination rose a distressing amount, increasing from 18% of those aware of him to 28% over the course of one week. Meanwhile, Biden's dissatisfaction numbers - which had been running a bit high after successive losses in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada - have cooled off slightly, falling from 30% prior to South Carolina to 26% as of this weekend. Though falling, they may still be a cause for concern should Biden seize the nomination.
With a considerable delegate lead over Sanders, Biden is also enjoying a turnaround in polling in Michigan, the most delegate-rich state to vote tomorrow.
To win the Democratic nomination outright, a candidate needs to secure 1,991 of the 3,979 pledged delegates available.
After a series of dropouts last week, Biden and Sanders are effectively in a two-person race, with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard remaining in the campaign but failing to qualify for the next debate after the DNC made it mathematically impossible for her to do so with her small pickup from American Samoa.
Biden and Sanders will go head-to-head on stage in Arizona for the next televised debate on March 15.
SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weigh its sample based on race or income. A total of 1,062 respondents were collected March 6-7 2020, a margin of error plus or minus 3.08 percentage points with a 95% confidence level. Of those 1,062 respondents, 470 said they were registered to vote and would do so in the Democratic primary.