JUDY WOODRUFF: Six of the remaining Democratic presidential candidates are set to debate
tomorrow night in Nevada.
And, as Lisa Desjardins reports, there will be a new face on stage.
LISA DESJARDINS: After mounting calls for Michael Bloomberg to have to debate his opponents
directly...
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), Presidential Candidate: I can't beat him on the airways, but I can
beat him on the debate stage.
JOSEPH BIDEN (D), Presidential Candidate: I'm going to get a chance to debate him on
everything from redlining to stop and frisk to a whole range of other things.
LISA DESJARDINS: 2020 Democrats will get their chance tomorrow night in Las Vegas, during
the ninth Democratic debate, which will be Bloomberg's first. The former New York City
mayor qualified for the debate after hitting 19 percent support in a new national "PBS
NewsHour"/NPR/Marist poll out today.
Another headline in the poll? Bernie Sanders' has a hefty double-digit lead. Other Democrats,
including those with strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, fell behind, like former
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who criticized Sanders at a town hall in Las
Vegas.
PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), Presidential Candidate: The politics that says, if you don't agree
with me 100 percent of the time, you don't even belong, that's clubbing people over the
head, telling them you have got to be just all the way over to the edge like us.
LISA DESJARDINS: The in-person campaigning is battling a tidal wave of TV ads, especially
from Bloomberg. He's funded a nearly $420 million ad blitz with his own fortune.
Bloomberg's record has come under fire in recent days for his past comments on stop-and-frisk
policing policies targeting minorities and his treatment of women at his company. Now
several news outlets have surfaced Bloomberg's 2011 "NewsHour" interview with Jeffrey Brown
about a program for young minority men.
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, Presidential Candidate: There's this enormous cohort of black and
Latino males aged, let's say, 16 to 25 that don't have jobs, don't have any prospects,
don't know how to find jobs, don't know what their skill sets are, don't know how to behave
in the workplace.
LISA DESJARDINS: That's the other undeniable dynamic, the importance of diversity. Some
40 percent of Nevada caucus-goers in 2016 were people of color. And candidates today
are directly appealing to them now.
TOM STEYER (D), Presidential Candidate: Democrats are supposed to represent working people.
Democrats are supposed to represent black people and Latinos.
LISA DESJARDINS: The hopefuls face off each other again when the state holds its caucuses
this Saturday.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Lisa Desjardins.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And for a closer look at the results from that latest "PBS NewsHour"/NPR/Marist
poll and what those numbers mean for the state of the 2020 race, I'm joined now by Domenico
Montanaro. He's the senior political editor at NPR.
And we welcome you back to the program.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, Political Editor, NPR: Thank you, as always.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, let's look at these numbers, Domenico.
We're going to put the numbers of this "NewsHour"/NPR/Marist poll up, as we just mentioned, Bernie Sanders
on top, 31 percent, Michael Bloomberg shooting up into second place.
What do you see with these numbers?
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Well, the key here, it's pretty remarkable.
You see Bloomberg having spent more than $300 million. We're hearing over $330 million now
from Ad Analytica. And what he's been able to do is flood the airwaves quite literally,
build his profile. And he's gained 15 points in our polling since December, the last time
we asked that.
He's leapfrogged right over Joe Biden, the former vice president, who had been the far-and-away
poll leader for a long time. And, remember, when I would come on and talk about how national
polls, they don't really matter all that much, you got to look at the states, and those things
will move, that's what's happened here.
And you see Warren down, Pete Buttigieg, really surprisingly, at 8 percent, down five points,
after two very good showings. A lot on the line in Nevada and South Carolina for them.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes, it's interesting, because Pete Buttigieg, just as one example, came
in first, just barely ahead of Sanders in Iowa, did well, right behind Sanders, in New
Hampshire. But that's not reflected here.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes.
He is the pledged delegate leader, and he's at 8 percent in the national polling.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: And the reason why national polls start to matter a little bit more now
is because we're only a couple weeks away from Super Tuesday, March 3, when 14 states
are going to hold contests.
You're going to have more than a third of all the delegates at stake up for grabs in
one single day. It really is like a national primary. And you have Mayor Bloomberg, having
advertised in all of those states, spending all that money. And he can do it at will because
he's worth billions.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The other interesting thing -- in fact, there's several interesting things
to look at, but Amy Klobuchar.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Here's somebody who did better than expected in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
But you see her in single digits in this...
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes.
Well, look, if you add up Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Biden, and Bloomberg together, they get to
about 51 percent. You add up Sanders and Warren for that progressive lane, you're at about
43 percent. So you see that there are sort of -- there's this filter where they're really
sort of struggling to get out of each other's way.
Klobuchar and Buttigieg in particular need to distinguish themselves, because they have
had a very difficult time breaking through with voters of color. You have two states
in Nevada and South Carolina where, overwhelmingly, you're going to see way more voters of color,
way more diverse states; 41 percent in 2016 in Nevada were non-white in the Democratic
electorate, and, in South Carolina, two-thirds non-white, 61 percent African-American.
They are only at 4 percent and 3 percent respectively in our poll with black voters. They got to
do better than that if they want to win the nomination.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, speaking of African-American voters, Domenico, Vice -- former Vice President
Biden was doing very well, has been doing very well in South Carolina.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Here's somebody who was leading in every -- almost every single national poll
show.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: That's right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And here you see now there have been a couple polls, including this one
out today, that shows him running third, and at 15 percent.
Now, this is a Nevada poll...
DOMENICO MONTANARO: That's Nevada.
JUDY WOODRUFF: ... which has him down a little bit, still in second place.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But what do you -- how do you account for what's happened to Vice President
Biden?
DOMENICO MONTANARO: By look, Biden still has support of African-Americans. In our poll,
he has 31 percent of the black vote, Bernie Sanders, though, right on his heels at 28
percent, so margin of error difference, really, between the two of them.
I think that's the most undertold story of this entire election is how much Bernie Sanders
has been able to win over voters of color, especially voters of color under 45. Voters
under 45 generally, it's like no other candidate exists.
He's got more than half of voters under 45 in our polling. And Biden was somebody who
promised he could win over those working-class white voters, and he couldn't do it in a place
like New Hampshire.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Exactly.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: And it makes his electability case very difficult.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So much volatility, so much change, so much to watch.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Yes, absolutely.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Domenico Montanaro, NPR, thank you very much.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: You're welcome.