Giving the new perspective that we all have now with some actual and polling results... can anyone believe Trump was willing risk being impeached to get dirt on the biggest loser that is Biden? It's hilarious that he put so much on the line for Biden, talk about falling for MSM headlines

ranking of the contenders for the democratic nomination

OK, there has gone quite some time, since I last viewed on the field. As we had the first contest in Iowa I dropped some categories like debate-appearences and media coverage (as I feel these become less important) and added the number of national delegates (duh) and the primary forecast models as new categories.

For reference, here are the last overviews:

• April
• June
• July
• August
• November

delegates

As the most important new category the number of pledged delegates won has newly arisen. With the result of Iowa we now have this graph:

I have ranked the number of delegates in two ways: an absolute ranking comparing it with the 1990 pledged delegates needed to win the nomination, and a relative ranking based on the percentage won of already distributed delegates. As so far only Iowa plays into the delegates, the absolute ranking is pretty bad currently for everyone, but that will change quick.

Here is the ranking:

primary forecasts

Recently some models for the primaries started with forecasts. These are made by 538 and by ozy.com. Both have complex models with a lot of variables, but in the end they differ a lot on Sanders, but look somewhat similar for the rest. Take it all with a grain of salt.

polls

Important are the polls. These are the main ingredience of the forecast before, but they are interesting in itself. I took polling averages from different publications, but overall it looks somewhat similar:

endorsements

This category saw some movements. In the past I said, that most endorsers are still on the sidelines. But some time ago I mentioned, that endorsements for Joe Biden picked up. At that time it still could've been a short term thing, but by now it is clear: Joe Biden is strongly favored by democratic party officials, and it shows in the endorsements. It is yet to be seen, if the Iowa result changes that. Another interesting note: Michael Bloomberg gathered endorsements in similar tempo. He is already third. So these both are clearly favored in endorsements by this point.

The numbers are based on the 538-endorsement-tracker and the automatic delegates (also known as superdelegates) that have made known they support a candidate.

And the ranking based on the endorsements:

campaign finance

We had new data for the last quarter of 2019. And this was different this time: the billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer really dominated that quarter and are now the best financed campaigns - with their own money.

If you look for donations instead, this category is lead by Sanders, followed by Buttigieg, Warren and Biden.

If we look on the distribution in each quarter, we see strongly the recent outburst of money from the billionaires. I want to give a shoutout to the campaign of Andrew Yang though, which managed to increase it's donations this quarter immensely.

That finances say a lot about who has the money to keep campaigning. Here the ranking based on that:

other

I removed most stuff from the other category, but kept favorability, name recognition and betting odds. Just for fun.

result

And putting the categories together I arrive at the following overall ranking. I kept the previous overall ranking as comparison:

This reflects pretty well, who I expect to drop out first.

LurkerJ said: Giving the new perspective that we all have now with some actual and polling results... can anyone believe Trump was willing risk being impeached to get dirt on the biggest loser that is Biden? It's hilarious that he put so much on the line for Biden, talk about falling for MSM headlines

What's worse is that they're still doubling down on it:

https://youtu.be/kPTOQEEbZc0

About Bloomberg... he apparently spend already 300 Million Dollar in January alone into his campaign. As Robert Reich says in the article, he's pretty much trying to do the closest thing to outright buying the election, as he announced wanting to spend up to 2 billion into his election. Keep in mind that that's about what he earns per year, so he wouldn't even have any losses in the end from spending so much.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/09/michael-bloomberg-donald-trump-presidential-election

Bloomberg has pratically infinite money, it's crazy. I wish it were Steyer surging instead though, he's a way better candidate.

If the narrative he's "buying the primaries" doesn't fly, he'll finish second or first in this thing. And second with Sanders first in a brokered convention likely means he's the nominee (assuming it's either Buttigieg or Biden who finishes third).

And that's the point at which the entire progressive wing of the party just stays home on election night. 

They never show up, anyway *shrugs*

Let's start with the top part. I'll debunk it with 1 race. OBAMA. Young people are overwhelmingly progressive, and he talked the talk. He didn't govern like a progressive cause he wasn't but he ran like one. So let's look at the last 4 presidential candidates on the dem side. AL gore Centrist LOST. John Kerry Centrist LOST. Obama (fake) Progressive WON. Hillary Clinton Centrist (LOST). Blatant Centrists have lost every single presidential election because they don't inspire progressives to come out, but when you come to us and talk to us like the fake one did you win. So kindly stop this nonsense about never showing up. How about listening to us when we tell you what we want and maybe, just maybe you can actually win.

2nd of all I'm going to go into West Virginia again and its not the only example. I've shown you the town hall of Bernie getting voters in Trump country to turn to him so I don't understand where you're getting this from. But again, WV is a red state, yet every single county went to the "far left socialist".

On top of that, They run at huge disadvantages. They have less money because they don't take corporate pac or big money, yet most of them did extremely well and if you look at Justice Dems and our Revolution... well their success rates for their age says a lot. Politics isn't something you can pick up 2 years ago and win races right after. There are too many obstacles in the way especially if you're challenging the establishment but we had wins again and not even a small few wins.

As for Gillum, I've said it once I've said it twice, so let me repeat it a third time for you. Florida hates Hillary, Florida Hates DWS. When he was running with Bernie, saying he's with Bernie etc he was polling well, and actually had the advantage, it looked good. He then went around with the 2 most hated figures in politics that I mentioned above, and then lost the general. He also pivoted away from progressive messaging and when you do that you suppress your own voters, so again he screwed himself.

And I'm going to point out 1 more thing before I leave since you love to claim centrism is the way to go. Obama ran as a Progressive, got a super majority. Governed as a Centrist, and the dems lost over 1000 seats before eventually losing the presidency in 2016. So yes, please. Let's keep this wonderful "successful" centrism strategy going all the way to Trump's 4 more years. Let me repeat it again for you, the only super majority ever gotten on the dems side during this centrism rise was when they had a presidential candidate run as a progressive.

Just as I had updated all the data, new national polls are in, that change a lot. Apparently Biden lost a lot of votes to Bloomberg. This puts Sanders in the lead. Remember: this is an average, not a single poll:

Similar movement in the RCP average. Although here Biden keeps a small lead.

Here's what I want to see out of the New Hampshire primary tonight:

1) The results. Tonight, like normal. No three-day delays.

2) Substantially higher turnout than in 2016. Just for my own peace of mind, I want to have some reassurance that there is a Democratic candidate who can actually motivate people to show up to the polls at higher rates than the one who (...technically anyway) lost to Trump four years ago and the Iowa turnout level didn't do that for me. This specifically means: I would like to see substantially more than 253,000 people vote this time around.

3) A Bernie Sanders win, which I think we will, in fact, get. And proportional representation for that win in the delegate allocations