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Polling Experts: Democrats More Likely to Nominate 'No One' Than Elizabeth Warren

January 9, 2020

The polling nerds at FiveThirtyEight unveiled their Democratic primary forecast on Thursday, and the results don't look good for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).

According to the FiveThirtyEight forecast, Warren has just a one-in-nine (12 percent) chance of winning enough delegates to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. That's slightly worse than the forecast model's odds—one-in-eight, or 13 percent—that no single candidate will win a majority of delegates, an outcome that could trigger a brokered convention in Milwaukee.

Former vice president Joe Biden remains the frontrunner to win the Democratic nomination. The FiveThirtyEight model gives him a 42 percent chance to receive a majority of delegates before the convention. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) is the next most likely candidate to be the nominee; the model gives the curmudgeonly socialist a one-in-five chance to lock it up. Pete Buttigieg, an unemployed digeridoo aficionado, has a 1-in-10 chance of being nominated, according to the forecast.

That was not the only piece of bad news for Warren on the polling front. Monmouth University on Thursday published a poll of registered Democrats in New Hampshire showing a 12-point decline in Warren's support since September, when the poll was last taken. She received 15 percent of the vote, which puts her in fourth place behind Sanders (18 percent), Biden (19 percent), and Buttigieg (20 percent).

The most recently available Iowa poll, from CBS News/YouGov, also had Warren in fourth place among registered Democrats, at 16 percent. She trailed Biden, Buttigieg, and Sanders, who were locked in a three-way tie at 23 percent, according to the poll.