Andrew Yang’s Campaign Says Internal Polling Shows Candidate Rising Nationally
The recent CBS News/YouGov polls didn’t hold good news for Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who earned just 2 percent support in Iowa and New Hampshire. The surveys counted for the January debate, which means the 44-year-old serial entrepreneur still needs 5 percent or higher in three more DNC-approved polls to take the stage.
Despite the bad news, Yang campaign chief Nick Ryan spoke to Politico in an article released Sunday and suggested that the campaign’s internal polling shows Yang rising nationally.
“You’re missing any public polling that would reflect that movement,” he said. “A lot of our internal metrics — be it name ID, consideration, likability, as well as our top lines — they are reflecting that once polls go back into the field, we’re going to start seeing some different numbers.”
University of New Hampshire professor Dante Scala said that Yang’s success will hinge on how candidates like Cory Booker and Michael Bennet perform in Iowa. If such candidates survive the state, Scala says Yang will have a tough time getting enough votes to break into the top of the second-tier.
As for the recent poll, some of Yang’s supporters have taken to social media to suggest that YouGov has not been fair to the candidate in the past, pointing to a previous poll by the global public opinion company that had Yang at 11 percent before it suggested the quality of the sample was compromised. Others suggested that the release of the poll should be taken in stride following the call for more qualifying polls before the January 10 deadline to meet the upcoming debate qualifications.
The poll is not the first roadblock for Yang in recent days. Following what Yang called a “bureaucratic paperwork issue,” the candidate was removed from Ohio’s March 17 Democratic presidential primary ballot. In response, the campaign announced a write-in campaign in Ohio.
The decision to remove Yang from the ballot was made by Ohio’s Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican who allegedly supported Ohio’s September voter purge that led to the removal of 180,000 voters.
Today Ohio's Secretary of State said @AndrewYang won't be on the ballot in that state for the primary.
Yang said the Sec. of State in OH should listen to the voice of the people instead of prioritizing bureaucracy.
"We are very confident that we'll be able to compete in Ohio." pic.twitter.com/dMw4QOrw7C
— Musadiq Bidar (@Bidar411) January 4, 2020
Yang is currently sixth place in overall polling, with RealClearPolitics putting his current national average at 3.4 percent. The candidate is ahead of Amy Klobuchar’s 3 percent and Michael Bloomberg’s 5.6 percent. Notably, Rasmussen Reports, which recently put Yang at 6 percent among national Democratic likely voters, took shots at the DNC’s pollsters. According to a previous Rasmussen Reports analysis, the pollsters the DNC relies on are less accurate, and the majority of them allegedly failed to predict Trump’s path to victory in 2016.
