part 1: refer to my feelings about polling and waiting for votes to come in

part 2: I'm not saying its wrong to talk to neo-libs and Bernie has not compromised on his values while doing this and working with republicans. However, coming off of a rigged primary in 2016 where you're meeting with the person who rigged it while knowing they rigged it before the same party's primary doesn't sound some alarm bells? I'd love to be wrong on this but I don't think I am. She's a team player and that's why I 100% think if it comes down to it she will go against Bernie if there is a contested convention. "Just a player in the game"

#National Democratic Primary, 4-Way-Race:
Biden 35%
Sanders 23%
Warren 20%
Buttigieg 17%@CNN 11/21-24https://t.co/aFNDzVHEKQ https://t.co/DeZdDssKe7

— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) November 28, 2019

A ranking of the democratic primary contenders

It is time to have another overview about the field, after the fifth debate and the entry of even more candidates.

I made some overviews in the past:

• in April
• in June
• in July
• in August

This ranking/overview looks at the typical key indicators for successful runs. The commonly accepted key indicators are: polls (duh), endorsements and campaign finance. As the DNC has this year so clear criteria for the qualification for the debates, I include that as another criteria. Also I think media coverage both in traditional and in social media is important. And I have a 'other' category for some other data.

As before, I rank the data on the scale from A to E, with an occasional X for extaordinary values. For aggregated values I added a + or -, for cases in which the removal of the best or worst value changed the ranking.

All data is avaliable in a spreadsheet (the format is for the free program gnumeric).

debates

Debate qualification is pretty straightforward. I count how often each candidate qualified and how many of the single criterias were fulfilled. The data comes from Wikipedia. A-rank is only available for reaching all qualifications or criteria.

Only Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren so far have met all qualification criteria, although Harris and Klobuchar still have a bit of time to meet the early states criteria for the sixth debate. Everyone else missed out on something. It is no coincidence too, that the four named first are generally considered the top-tier currently.

polling

I gathered the polling averages of multiple sources: 270 to win, Realclearpolitics, The Economist, The New York Times and 10@10. 270 to win and Realclearpolitics have also polling averages of the four early states, so I included that too.

As 15% is a hurdle set by the rules, I used that to determine B-rank. A-rank is 30%, as someone above that has a good chance to win. X-rank is set at 50%, because only ever one candidate can reach that.

No candidate consistently polls above 30%, although Biden manages this feat in South Carolina. He, Warren and Sanders are the only ones consistently polling above the 15% threshold. Buttigieg polls in his own tier, the others follow.

endorsements

Endorsements are a sign of support from party officials. I use the 538 endorsement-tracker, but does not only look for point-values, but also the raw number of endorsements. I also included this time the number of unpledged delegates (= superdelegates) for the convention, which indicated their voting preference. According to the new rules the superdelegates only come into play if the first ballot has no majority, but still they exist and show a party preference. The data for this comes from Wikipedia.

For the ranking I use the percentage of the total endorsement-pool. For instance there are 766 superdelegate votes.

As you can see, nobody reached more than C-rank (I put B-rank at 5%). Overall only 20% of possible endorsements so far are set, and that includes the ones for candidates that already dropped out. So the majority of endorsees is still on the sidelines.

campaign finance

This category I updated with the data from the third quarter.

The above graph shows how each candidate gets his money. Delaney and Steyer both are self-financing, in Steyers case it only comes through a candidate committee, which is why it is in red. As you can see, Bernie Sanders is the king of small donations, while Buttigieg has overtaken Biden in bigger donations. Biden himself fell back, now nearly overtaken by Harris in total.

This graph shows how much each candidate raised in each quarter. You can see which campaign is slowing down or accelerating in fundraising this way. As you can see, both Sanders and Warren raised more in the third quarter, Kamala Harris stayed constant, while Bidens fundraising slowed. For the lower-tiered candidates it is notable how Andrew Yang could practically explode his fundraising.

For the ranking I used total money raised, money raised by donations (instead through transfers or self-financing), cash on hand and third quarter fundraising (as indicator for newer developments).

Bloomberg and Patrick haven't yet filed any report, as they entered so late. Clearly Sanders is leading in the money race, followed by Warren and Buttigieg. Biden is fallen behind in that regard.

media attention

This category contains the media attention the different candidates get. For that I looked how many big media had listed the candidate in their lists of major candidates, looked at cable new mentions for the year and the last three months. I also looked at social media, and there how many followers had the candidates on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

As you can see, it is a bit divided between cable news and social media. While Bernie Sanders is strong on social media, Joe Biden dominates the cable news mentions. Elizabeth Warren follows in both categories, everyone else falls behind.

other

The other-category is a wild mix of other stuff that I thought interesting. It contains a count of how many of the qualifying polls for each debate the candidates reached the threshold, net favorability and name recognition calculated from Morning Consult data, the betting odds of different betting sites gathered by Realclearpolitics and the unique donors each candidate had in june as compiled for the NYT donor map.

This category is lead by the three frontrunner, followed by Buttigieg and Harris. Yang is in a strange in-between place.

result

Well, taken together, we arrive at this:

I included the ranking from August for comparison. As you can see, Sanders and Biden are leading, followed by Warren, Buttigieg and Harris.

Soooooo many stats... O.o

Amen to that. Great work!

I think it depends who is using the term and in what context. I know plenty of feminist women who use the term SJW.

SJW is a term that I associate with condescending opportunists who don't legitimately believe in the social equality-oriented causes they purport to so much as they enjoy appearing to be more cultured and sophisticated than say people who lack a college degree and reporting people on the internet for disagreeing with them. An SJW, at least in my mind, can be identified by their frequent use of terms like "intersectionality"  and "cisgender" like Jane Average knows what the hell you're talking about and condemnation of people who don't embrace politically correct lifestyles like veganism that ordinary working class people might not be able to afford.

AVERAGE PERSON: We need to support Planned Parenthood and other women's health providers...
SJW (WHO IS NOT TRANS): Watch your cis!
AVERAGE PERSON: What does that mean?
SJW: Educate yourself!

Of course, I get called one too from time to time too, but it's always by guys with underdressed "waifu" and/or Pepe the Nazi frog avatars who use terms like "gynocentrism" in casual conversation and assume normal, rational people who follow credible news sources not only understand what that means but furthermore agree with them and also once used the #gamergate hashtag, so...you know, I recognize that any concept can be abused by people who are so far out there on the right that everyone looks like Stalin to them.

ME: I like Star Wars.
MRA: I do too except they should bring George Lucas back bcuz of all this gynocentrism.
ME: What does that mean? Like there are too many women on-screen for you or something?
MRA: Don't call me a sexist. I believe the sexes are equal, it's just women today have pink hair and want special treatment.
ME: ...

It seems all the more extreme groups try to set themself apart with a special language. if you need a dictionary to talk to one of these people, something is probably wrong. And even if they are well-intentioned… if you fail to communicate with normal persons your ideology will probably not win.

Then for you, I believe you'd do well to stop using the term SJW as a pejorative as it detracts from the actual concerns social justice activists raise and fight for. You're actively fanning the conservative flame there.

If those bolded terms are your identifiers of a sjw (which is completely ridiculous btw) then I guess you could categorize me as one because they're needed in some cases to describe the systemic oppression different groups face and how we can change that through political involvement and social activism. And I hope you're intention was not to insult me by insinuating I am one (as in your context you'd be using it pejoratively) because I have used those terms with you on numerous occasions. That'd be extremely rude.

Cisgender isn't like some type of vague concept that's hard to grasp or something and a lot of people know what it means and if they don't it takes a literal 5 seconds to describe it. Feminism is inherently intersectional, as most sects address the different factors of oppression women face in differing cultures, places, religious doctrines, etc. There's a reason prominent feminists adhere to intersectionality, even if it's not explicitly stated, and not white feminism.

But overall I do see and understand your point it's that for you, basically a sjw is a vapid, hypocritical, self-aggrandizing social activist. They don't really believe and adhere to what they preach and are only in it for clout not for actual change. Would that be correct?

Most sects of feminism are intersectional even if not explicitly stated. And feminists aren't an extreme group. Feminism, usually within communities of color, use intersectionality to describe different ways we're systemically oppressed. A queer latin transwomen will have different struggles than a straight white cis women. It's just common sense.

Learning new words are a part of life and the definitions of intersectionality and cisgender aren't difficult to learn. Saying a group is extreme because in your personal vocabulary you don't know words they do is mind boggling. I'm sure most people didn't know what Trans meant or pansexual but that doesn't mean they were an extreme group. And people eventually adjusted to using those terms.

And I'll just add, every trans person knows what cisgender means because that's part of realizing you're trans. It's like "okay I'm trans but what are people who're born with their gender matching their sex?? Cis. Okay they're cis." Obviously that's not how it goes but it's the best illustration I could come up with rn lol I'm tired.

Don't get me wrong. I educated myself and learned about these terms. But most people will not and I too felt that this was an unnessecary step and a complication. But in the end it is a sign of elitism to use a specialized vocabulary. If people don't understand you without learning a lot of stuff, you will not convince them about your point of view.

Using a special vocabulary works well in a small circle of 'initiated'. We as gamers use special terms specific to gamers. Like RPG, cut-scene, lag, aggro, party and so on. Using these terms in your circle is fine. But it fails the moment you try to communicate outside that circle. If you want that communication, you can't ask the others to learn your vocabulary. In politics you want to communicate outside of your circle. Because otherwise you lose, at least in democracies. You need to communicate to a lot of people and convince them, to get the change you want. That is why the usage of the specialized vocabulary is damning. Funny enough that left and right do it both.

Maybe extreme was the wrong word. I meant a group, that stands aside the mainstream. Extreme is often negatively associated, but you can use it neutral. But probably it is also not what I meant. I meant more a group that started to exclusively move in their own circles, therefore using the specialized vocabulary more and more as normal. That is what I understand if Jaicee references Jane Average. Sure enough even 'average' people are very differently. But there is a common core language that can be used to communicate with nearly everyone. If you want a change, you should use that. That doesn't mean that these words are per se bad, but you should be aware if the other side of your communication can understand these terms and their implications.

You should realize what using a specialized language makes with persons that not usually come into contact with these terms do. They feel excluded. Language can be used to separate the "Plebs" and the aristocracy. That can be intention or not, but normal person often understand a strong usage of many such terms as a separating language. Even if they understand the term, but it doesn't get into their day-to-day life a person making much use of such terms can come off as "the other one that doesn't understand a bit our life". Really, no way to convince people of the need of certain actions.

This is the same for right circles. "gynocentrism" as Jaicee said as an example is as much strange language as "cisgender". Use that terms sparsely and be ready to explain them if you communicate to the general public.