Economist Poll Averages: Waren 27%, Biden 25%, Sanders 15%, Buttigieg 6%, Harris 5%

[bluewater]

Who is ahead in the Democratic primary race?

Here you will find our average of each candidate’s performance in all high-quality, national public opinion polls conducted so far as well as the probability of victory inferred from political betting. You will also find data from YouGov, our pollster, breaking down support for each candidate by demographic group. Under “Candidates” you will find further demographic data for each contender.

Methodology
We estimate support for each candidate using a statistical method called Bayesian dynamic Dirichlet regression. The model aggregates polls over the course of the campaign, putting more weight on polls conducted recently, less on those with small sample sizes and accounting for “house effects”—the tendency for some polling firms to over- or underestimate support for certain candidates. We exclude polling firms that do not use rigorous methods. In the past, surveys conducted over the phone with a live interviewer or with online survey-takers that use well-thought-out methodologies have been more reliable than other methods.

Check out all the results at:

https://projects.economist.com/democratic-primaries-2020/

People familiar with RCP POLLS tracker might wonder why their tracker chart looks so jumpy and the Economist's so smooth.

The reason is RCP just averages the last 5 or so polls and then plots those, this means their trendline jumps around a lot as a few polls come in better or worse for the candidates.

As stated in their methodology, The Economist's tracker uses a more sophisticated statistical method called Bayesian dynamic Dirichlet regression to obtain a "best line fit" of the scattered polling data points.