Tonight's the first debate night. Tens of millions of Americans will be watching this two-night event, which will probably be the single most important event of the whole campaign in framing this primary contest overall in the public consciousness. Here's who I'm rooting for the most going in:

Night 1:

1) Elizabeth Warren
2) Elizabeth Warren
3) Cory Booker

Night 2:

1) Kirsten Gillibrand
2) Marianne Williamson
3) Bernie Sanders

Steve Bullock now has his third qualifying poll, which means for the second set of debates we have 21 qualified candidates. This means tiebreaker rules get into action.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/tiebreakers-might-decide-who-makes-the-second-democratic-debates-and-it-could-get-complicated/

EDIT: And Wayne Messam is also close, as he currently has two qualifying polls:

http://fortune.com/2019/06/25/wayne-messam-democratic-debate/

I expect Warren t "win" the first debate. I can see Beto doing quite well if he does not go toe to toe with Warren. His debates against Ted Cruz were actually pretty good. Booker, Amy and De Blasio could also have a strong showing.

Night two I honestly don't know who will "win" but I do think Joe Biden will take a bad hit.

Will it only get televised or will there also be streams on the internet? Would love to watch them but don't have US television here...

The debate setup.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/stage-set-first-democratic-debate-here-s-primer-night-1-n1018551

NBC will stream it on their website.

The stage.

https://twitter.com/scottdetrow/status/1143929727654289408?s=09

A comprehensive overview of the democratic primary contenders

As the first debate is upon us and my last post about this is two mmonths old now, I thought about updating the informations.

I include my sources as links and also link the download of the gnumeric spreadsheet I used to collect the data.

As for addditional information consider this:

• 538 wants to gauge the effect of the debates on the race and has therefore collected the before-situation: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/democratic-debate-poll/
• NYT has collected data about polls, fundraising and news coverage for the main candidates: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/democratic-polls.html

field

I included all running candidates considered major from at least on source and additionally Stacey Abrams (as she uttered interest) and the withdrawn candidate Richard Ojeda.

First off I list the debate qualification. I add if they qualified via both criteria, or which one if only one. The criteria are:

• polls: at least 3 considered polls have the candidate at 1% or above (first two debates) or at least 4 considered polls have the candidate at 2% and above (third debate)
• donors: at least 65,000 unique donors (first two debates) or 135,000 donors (third debate)

For the third debate only polls are considered that are taken after June 28th (Friday). Also note that for the first two debates it is enough to meet only one of the criterias, while for the third debate both criterias have to be met. As for the second debate already 21 candidates are qualified, the tiebreaker rules will be applied for that, so the ones only qualifying via polls should feel unsafe.

I have then collected data about the polls. As so far no qualifying poll exists for the third debate, only columns for the first two debates are included. But a column for polls above 2% is included too, to get a feeling who might have a shot to qualify at the poll-criteria.

Same for the donor-criterium. As these numbers are self-reported I add the date at which the milestone was reached.

My sources for the information about the criteria are 538 and Wikipedia.

Finally I have listed nine organization and which candidates they consider major (by including them in their listing):

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Candidates
• 538: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/tiebreakers-might-decide-who-makes-the-second-democratic-debates-and-it-could-get-complicated/
• CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/21/politics/2020-democrats-running-for-president/index.html
• Quartz: https://qz.com/1536793/your-guide-to-the-2020-democratic-presidential-candidates/
• New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/2020-presidential-candidates.html
• Reuters: https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ELECTION/010091471JC/index.html
• inclusion in the average polling at Real Clear Politics: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html
• inclusion in the survey from Morning Consult: https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary/
• Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/2020-democrat-candidates-771735/

endorsements

For this I take the data from the 538-endorsement-tracker. They apply each office a point-value, based on importance. The above graph shows the point-value of the endorsements and a percentage of the complete pool. Overall just 16% of the possible endorsements are taken, so there is room for change. Maybe the debates will bring in new endorsements.

campaign financing

The data is from Wikipedia, or more precise I followed the links at Wikipedia to the FEC-listing for the finances of the single candidates.

media coverage

538 tracks the media coverage of the candidates in cable TV news and in online stories:

polls

And last but not least: the polls. I created a weighted average of the poll-tracker at 538 and took the average from Real Clear Politics and 270 to Win.

Well, I hope this little package of information helps you to enter the debates this night with all you need.

Great post Mnementh. Looking at those who haven't qualified for the third debate it looks like Yang, Booker, and Gabbard are probably gonna end up qualifying.
Cory was smart to go on the attack last week against Biden since it's garnering him more press. I feel like he'll do good in tonights debate.
Also it's crazy that Biden only has 8k more donors than Yang. Says a lot about how far Yang has come and how much of an establishment candidate Biden is.