Since Sen. Bernie Sanders’ triumphant rally in Queens, New York, last Sunday, the Vermont senator has regained momentum after his heart attack in early October.
Sanders’ bid for the Democratic presidential nomination sagged in the aftermath of heart surgery that left him sidelined for two weeks. But after a strong performance on the debate stage last week and the biggest campaign event of the Democratic primary season with 25,000 fans, Sanders’ polls have bumped up.
In the weeks leading up to the heart attack, Sanders’ numbers stagnated, trailing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden in national polls.
On Tuesday, Emerson College published a nationwide poll that had Sanders moving back into second place with 25%, yo-yoing with Warren who moved back into third position with 21%. Biden still leads the pack, but by a slim margin, at 27%.
Despite that uptick, Sanders has lost ground with primary voters who are gravitating to Warren, and the Vermont senator will need to redouble his efforts in order to win over former supporters, according to Brendan Kane, a research assistant for the Emerson College survey.
“To create a winning coalition in the primary, Sanders will need to win back more of the voters who supported him in 2016 from Warren than he is currently receiving,” Kane said in a statement.
In a CNN poll released on Wednesday, Sanders and Warren are neck and neck for second place. Warren is at 19% and Sanders is just behind with 16%. Both progressive candidates are well behind Biden, who at 34% is now at his strongest showing in CNN polling since he announced his candidacy for president in April.
Sanders’ uptick in the polls comes after he received endorsements from Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who are part of the progressive Congressional group nicknamed “The Squad.”
After Ocasio-Cortez joined Sanders in Queens, New York, for his rally, Omar is scheduled to attend a Nov. 3 Sanders rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Another member of the group, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is expected to publicly endorse Sanders for president during a rally in Detroit, Michigan, Sunday evening.
Riding this momentum, the Sanders campaign unveiled a plan to legalize marijuana in the first 100 days in office.
Sanders outlined his intention to make cannabis legal in August — when he announced his criminal justice reform plan. The formal announcement last week coincided with President Donald Trump’s speech at a justice forum in the early primary state of South Carolina.
While Sanders has stabilized in national polls, he is behind other top candidates in Iowa.
In an Iowa State University survey of likely Iowa Caucus attendees published Thursday, Warren moved into first place at 28%, with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg second at 20%, and Sanders coming in third at 18%. Biden, meanwhile, who fell to 12% in the poll, slipped to fourth place.
On the same day the Iowa poll was released, news broke that Sanders had won the endorsement of Stacey Walker, a rising political star in Iowa who boasts an impressive organizing apparatus, according to Politico.
Walker told Politico he backed Sanders because he believes the nation needs a “bold leader,” and “as a black man living in America, I’ve had enough of politicians telling me we have to scale back our dreams and ambitions.”
Despite being down in the polls, the Sanders team is confident it will win Iowa and earn the much coveted momentum it needs heading into New Hampshire.
“We have the biggest volunteer base in the state. We’re making massive investments on TV and digital. And we’re not going to stop until we win,” said Bill Neidhardt, deputy Iowa director for the campaign, on Twitter Friday.
Sanders has deployed a national strategy. While the Sanders campaign has invested in early primary states, he has also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on staff and consulting in the Rust Belt as well as states that have historically voted Republican. Last week he received political endorsements in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio.
Since July, Sanders’ team has spent $185,668 on research and staff in Pennsylvania, $142,926 in New York, $93,706 in Illinois, $35,908 in Michigan $31,906 in Ohio and $2,700 in Wisconsin, according to the campaign finance data.
Sanders also invested $15,517 in Alabama, $9,652 in Arkansas and dropped more than $1,000 in both Kentucky and Louisiana.
Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Sanders, told the Wall Street Journal in September that campaign events in Red states could help expand the Democratic Party’s base, which is part of Sanders’ strategy.
“Bernie Sanders wants to telegraph that he is prepared for the mantle of leadership, in terms of being the head of the Democratic Party, that he is prepared to expand the reach of the party into every state,” Weaver said. “We are no longer going to concede a large number of states to the Republicans.”
In a strategy call with supporters in late September, Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, said the Vermont senator’s campaign has the “most ambitious path of any out there” because of its plan to mobilize groups of people who are less likely to go to the polls and first time voters.
“It will be young people, people who have never voted before, working class people, working class people of color,” Shakir said. “It is the hardest path because these are hardest constituencies to get out to vote.”
A former top aide to Sanders who no longer works for him and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the campaign is laying a ground work for whomever the eventual winner of the Democratic primary is.
“Folks that are serious about winning in 2020 recognize the enormous impact Bernie can have on expanding the electorate,” the former aide said. “People thinking strategically about 2020 recognize, whether he is the nominee or not, that he is essential to ensuring voters that stayed home in 2016 and new voters show up.”
