How Happy Should Joe Biden Be About His Lead In 2020 Democratic Primary Polls?

[comradebillyboy]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-happy-should-joe-biden-be-about-his-lead-in-2020-democratic-primary-polls/

Those New Hampshire numbers about match the national polls we’ve seen. A January Harris/Harvard University poll, for example, found Biden in first (27 percent), with Sanders in second (16 percent). Biden also placed first among Democrats nationally, at 22 percent, in a SurveyMonkey poll last month. A January CNN poll showed Biden leading President Trump, in a hypothetical general election match-up, by a whopping 57 percent to 40 percent. Sanders had a similar margin. Oprah Winfrey, who has been touted in the press as a potential candidate but does not sound as though she is interested in running, bested Trump 51 percent to 42 percent....

There are not many clear patterns or rules in presidential politics, in part because the elections happen only once every four years. That leaves us with a pretty small data set. I think the conventional wisdom is now perhaps overly skeptical about well-established figures doing well; people who follow politics closely might have over-learned the lessons of 2008 and 2016, when two upstarts (Barack Obama and then Trump) seemingly came out of nowhere to win their parties’ nominations and then the White House. Romney in 2012 and Clinton in 2016 won their parties’ nominations and came close to being elected president. Biden is far from a shoo-in. He might not even run, and he can’t assume based on the polls that he’d enter the field as the favorite. But he looks like he’d be a fairly strong candidate, at least right now.

So it begins