Finally, a St. Pete Polls survey of Florida, conducted Feb. 12-13, put Bloomberg at 27 percent, Biden at 26 percent, Buttigieg at 11 percent, Sanders at 10 percent and Klobuchar at 9 percent.
However, St. Pete has historically featured unusually high numbers for Bloomberg and fairly low numbers for Sanders, relative to other pollsters. Adjusted for these house effects, our model interprets this poll as saying Biden has 25 percent support, Bloomberg has 21 percent, Sanders has 13 percent, Buttigieg has 10 percent and Klobuchar has 7 percent.
This was still a bad poll for Biden, who lost 15 points since St. Pete’s previous survey in late January, and a good one for Bloomberg, who gained 10 points. But it also wasn’t a great one for Sanders or Buttigieg. It showed virtually no change for Sanders, and Buttigieg ticked up by a middling 5 points. Biden surely would have preferred not to have lost so much ground, but it’s definitely a silver lining for him that the new Democratic front-runner (Sanders) did not surpass him.