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:
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.