POLL SHOCK. The More People See Mike Bloomberg the Less They Like Him

By streiff | 9:00 PM on February 21, 2020

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Michael Bloomberg – Caricature by DonkeyHotey, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

Midget billionaire Mike Bloomberg made his debut on the national stage as a candidate (we’ve grown used to watching him scold New Yorkers for drinking soda and cheering the tossing of young black and Hispanic men up against the wall). It was fairly ugly. Some folks thought Bloomberg wasn’t prepared. I think that’s ridiculous. His problem was that he thought the appearance was a monumental waste of his time and he isn’t used to dealing with people who he can neither fire nor have arrested.

What is clear is that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were the only candidates who helped themselves

CREDIT: Morning Consult: Bloomberg Loses Ground Following Debate Debut in Las Vegas

But Bloomberg was really battered in a way that the other candidates were not. Part of it was that he was an unknown quantity. Part of it was that he came across as a humorless scold who wanted to run everyone’s lives.

NEW POST-#DEMDEBATE POLL ahead of #NevadaCaucus:

• @MikeBloomberg’s first-choice support fell 3 points nationwide, to 17 percent and behind @JoeBiden.
• His net favorability fell 20 points, the only significant movement among candidates.

More:https://t.co/DTi3N0Vx2t pic.twitter.com/Pzz0tOOU8D

— Eli Yokley (@eyokley) February 21, 2020

I only have a master’s degree and it took be some frustrating minutes to decipher this. All numbers are rounded off to whole digits. So if we look at the “ALL” category, Bloomberg became 10 points more unfavorably viewed after the debate than before (for a -10 rating) and he lost 9 points in favorability (rendered as -9). Add the two together and you get -19 and the rounding brings it to -20. I think the more traditional way of seeing this as a -10 is better, but big numbers get big attention, I guess.

As you can see, Bloomberg only gained ground with one group, self-described conservatives. I suspect that part of the poll was conducted among the staff of The Bulward, The Dispatch, and corners of the Washington Examiner.

The good news for Bloomberg is that he’s above 50% approval with every group. But if he dropped like this after one appearance, one in which he had something of a Halo Effect going with moderates and liberals, then he has plenty of downside mobility in the coming weeks.