February 19, 2016 12:28 PM UTC

Bernie Up In Colorado? Who The Hell Knows

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Hill reports on a new poll from the right-wing “news” site Washington Free Beacon, showing Sen. Bernie Sanders pulling ahead of Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic caucusgoers in Colorado:

Bernie Sanders has erased a double-digit deficit and pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton in Colorado, according to a Washington Free Beacon poll of voters released on Friday.

Sanders wins 49 percent support compared to Clinton’s 43 percent in the poll.

Democrats will caucus in Colorado on March 1, when voters in a dozen states hold contests.

Colorado is seen as one of the best states for Sanders to pull out a victory.

The spin of The Hill’s report raises obvious questions of bias, since there is no previous poll from the Washington Free Beacon to establish the baseline from which Sanders would “erase a double-digit deficit.” Without successive polls from the same pollster using similar methodology, that claim is simply nonsense.

With the Republican presidential primary field severely destabilized by frontrunner Donald Trump’s insurgent campaign, Republicans are increasingly focused on the Democratic primary as a source of good news. Their desired spin is that Sanders’ strength in the Democratic primary is an analogue to the disruption Trump is causing on the right.

This false equivalence ignores the enormous difference in experience and qualifications between Sanders and Trump, which would be a decisive factor in the event they were to be the parties’ respective nominees. With that said, Clinton’s upcoming “firewall” primary states give her an edge over Sanders down the stretch that Trump’s opponents simply can’t count on. For Republicans, Trump’s enduring lead in the “firewall” states mean that, absent a significant change and soon, they have no firewall.

The heavy resources being airdropped into Colorado by both Democratic presidential campaigns are a clear indicator that they both want to win our state’s caucuses on March 1st very badly. We’ll be keen to see polling from reputable outlets over the coming days.

Until then, we strongly caution against reading too much into somebody else’s wishful thinking.