POLL: Formidable late-comer Bloomberg could be uniquely positioned to benefit from Biden slide

• Among supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden, 37.4% like Michael Bloomberg, according to a new Insider poll.
• Among Biden's backers, no candidate has as much support as Bloomberg.
• If Biden continues to plummet in the polls, Bloomberg and Buttigieg could face off for the mantle of most-electable-centrist.
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Among all Democratic voters, just under 33% like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But among supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden, that figure jumps to 37.4%, according to a new Insider poll.

Facing a torrential slide since the Iowa caucuses, Biden's supporters could move to another candidate. If they do, the latest Insider poll could signal that Bloomberg is uniquely positioned to pick off a portion of Biden's votes. Among Biden's backers, no candidate has as much support as Bloomberg.

The poll, conducted February 8 through February 9, had a 3% margin of error. Of the 1,013 respondents, 414 were registered Democrats.

For the past several months, Insider has been conducting SurveyMonkey Audience polls to gauge voters' opinions on the 2020 Democratic Primary. You can download every poll here. (Read more about how the Insider Democratic primary tracker works here.)

A new centrist standard-bearer?

Until recently, Biden was seen by many as the standard-bearer for moderate Democrats. In last week's Iowa caucuses, however, he finished fourth, prompting questions about his potential to win the Democratic nomination.

"Biden wasn't inspiring Iowa voters and his support was inch-deep," wrote POLITICO journalists Natasha Korecki and Mark Caputo.

"It was a cluster-f---," said one Biden aide. "A f---ing disaster," another added.

Though it is early yet, Bloomberg could vie for the mantle of most-electable-moderate along with Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Buttigieg has seen increasingly strong results lately. He claimed victory in last week's Iowa caucuses, though the results are disputed. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also claimed victory. The Buttigieg and Sanders campaigns both requested a partial recanvass of the results.

As Buttigieg looks to Tuesday's primary in New Hampshire, a Real Clear Politics average of statewide polls show him in second place at 21%, trailing Sanders by seven percentage points.

The latest Quinnipiac University poll, released Monday, found a considerable uptick in national support for Bloomberg (15%), who is statistically tied with Biden (17%) for second place. (The poll's margin of error is 2.5%.) Sanders leads the pack nationally with 25% of the vote.

Buttigieg is in fourth place with 10%, trailing Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (14%).

At 15%, Bloomberg's support has nearly doubled since the previous Quinnipiac poll, released January 28, showed him in fourth place with 8% of the vote.

Without votes from early states, Bloomberg turns to other means

With the New Hampshire primary underway Tuesday, Biden himself is not expecting a strong outcome. On debate night last Friday, he said he would "probably take a hit" in New Hampshire. He announced Tuesday that he would not stay in the state that evening, opting to move on to South Carolina.

Bloomberg is not participating in any of the four early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. But those states only make up 4% of all delegates.

With a functionally unlimited sum of cash, Bloomberg, who is worth an estimated $62 billion, seeks to find support later - and differently - than most candidates.

He entered the presidential race in November 2019, and has spent more than $200 million of his own money on the campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit that tracks money in US politics.

On Tuesday, the Bloomberg campaign announced it would double its advertisement-spending to roughly $600 million for television and digital ads.

• Read more:
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• Michael Bloomberg is the only candidate to give money to the DNC. They just changed their rules to let him onto the debate stage.
• Americans are already exhausted with the 2020 election, and it's just getting started. Other countries have laws limiting the length of campaigns.

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 1,083 respondents were collected January 22, 2020, a margin of error plus or minus 3 percentage points with a 95% confidence level.