Politics, Etc. by John Nesler
In the mix with all the other craziness that is going on, we still have a presidential primary ongoing—Bernie Sanders has clearly opted not to drop out, given that he participated in an online campaign event on March 22, and his campaign has expressed interest in participating in an April debate.
Thus, the beat goes on. But the average person probably isn’t aware of what’s been playing out with the primary, due to the COVID-19 crisis.
You could be forgiven if you have been vaguely keeping one eye on news coverage of the Democratic primary, and more or less understood there to be around 5 to 8 major candidates that are seriously in the hunt for the Democratic nomination. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg have all generated a lot of headlines, while several others such as Andrew Yang, Corey Booker, and Tulsi Gabbard have also amassed fervent fan bases.
The Democratic primary preseason is progressing more rapidly than most casual observers realize. As of this writing, we’re not that far off from the tipping point where the days left before the Iowa caucus (142 days away) equals the duration of the actual primaries (125 days from the Iowa caucus on February 3rd to the Virgin Islands caucus on June 6th). We’re at the point where a lot of things are going to start happening very, very quickly.
Updated August 11, 2020: Slowly getting caught up on polling, fundraising, and primaries from the last couple months.
Previously Updated June 9, 2020: Updated Georgia and West Virginia writeups to reflect results of June 9th primaries
On November 3, 2020, much more will be decided than whether Donald Trump secures a second term as president. Control of the Senate will also be at stake, with 35 seats up for grabs. This article attempts to identify which Senate seats are flippable, and which are not (regardless of how many tens of millions of dollars are thrown at them).
For the last several months, global survey research firm Morning Consult has been conducting a weekly tracking poll of the Democratic presidential primary. Every week, the site is updated with the results of the previous week’s survey of nearly 17,000 registered voters throughout the United States.
Pete Buttigieg has been a captivating candidate for many. I had been impressed with him early on, and thought that he gave a top-3 performance during the first debate. His fundraising also signals that he has incredible potential as a candidate. According to Federal Election Commission filings, Buttigieg raised more money than any other candidate between March 1st and June 30th of 2019, surpassing even frontrunners Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
I’ve been tracking the polling for top candidates in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary since around early March. Early on, for the sake of simplicity and time, I decided that I wouldn’t bother tracking candidates that were bottom of the bucket type candidates, especially since there are so. Damn. Many. Of them. Besides, it’s not terribly scintillating to watch slight tenth of a point twitches in polling for candidates that are a rounding error above zero.
Even though we’re more than 8 months out from the start of the Democratic Primary, the inevitable circus of a presidential primary is already well under way. So much so that one of the key challenges facing Democrats is whittling the Costco-sized bulk pack of 24 candidates already in the running down to a more manageable (and comprehensible) number.
I’ve been maintaining a spreadsheet generating a graph from a running average of the Democratic primary candidates since March. This is the first time I’ll be rolling this out in any detail, so I want to take a step back first and explain my rationale for my approach.
A poll released by Fox News in May 2019 pitting Trump against top Democratic candidates—Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris and Buttigieg—made a number of journalists, commentators, and armchair analysts raise their eyebrows a bit.
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