fivethirtyeight--2020-02-05--With More Results In, Buttigieg And Sanders Still Lead In Iowa — Biden Still Fourth

UPDATE ( Feb. 5 , 2020 , 2:30 p.m. ) : At around 2 p.m. Eastern , the Iowa Democratic Party released more results from about 70 precincts , taking us from 71 percent precincts reporting to 75 percent .
However , it did not significantly change any candidates ’ numbers .
Sanders still leads in initial and final vote preference , but Buttigieg leads in state delegate equivalents .
After a frustrating Monday night when we got almost no results from the Iowa caucuses , we now have partial results .
At around 5 p.m. Eastern Tuesday , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 62 percent of Iowa ’ s caucus sites ; a few more results trickled in later in the evening .
As of Wednesday morning , with about 71 percent of precincts reporting at least some results , here ’ s where the three measures of the vote — initial preference , final preference and state delegate equivalents — stood .
So far , Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading in the two counts of the popular vote , the first and final alignments .
Twenty-four percent of caucusgoers supported him on the initial ballot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , former South Bend , Indiana , Mayor Pete Buttigieg .
In the final realignment vote — after supporters of candidates who didn ’ t meet the viability threshold ( usually 15 percent of the vote at a caucus site ) are allowed to switch to another candidate — Sanders had 26 percent and only a 1-point lead on Buttigieg .
But Buttigieg is currently pulling more state delegate equivalents ( 27 percent of them ) , which is what determines the number of Democratic National Convention delegates a candidate receives out of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing well in rural counties , which have a lot of delegates relative to their population , while Sanders ran up big margins in urban areas and college towns , which punch a bit below their weight in terms of delegates .
Of course , with about 29 percent of precincts yet to report , these are not the final numbers .
They ’ re probably in the right ballpark , though .
The precincts that are reporting come from all 99 of Iowa ’ s counties , and they should be pretty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ example , The New York Times ’ s ( in ) famous “ needle ” — essentially a model that uses early election returns to estimate the results in outstanding precincts and thus predict a final outcome — expects Sanders to hold onto his popular-vote leads and Buttigieg to stay ahead in the delegate count .
If so , it seems like clear good news for the Sanders and Buttigieg campaigns , although the former remains significantly more likely to win the Democratic nomination .
Sen. Elizabeth Warren , who is currently in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more of a neutral result .
Former Vice President Joe Biden turned in a weaker-than-expected performance , however .
So far , he has gotten just 13 percent of the post-realignment vote — toward the lower end of his likely range according to our Iowa primary forecast and just half of the 26 percent our model had him winning on average .
For comparison , Sanders , Buttigieg and Warren are all currently overshooting their average vote share per the FiveThirtyEight forecast .
( Quick programming note : Our forecast is still frozen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not updating it with new data — until we get more final results from Iowa . )
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Outside of those top four , only Sen. Amy Klobuchar and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang received a significant share of votes or state delegate equivalents .
Klobuchar currently has 13 percent of the post-realignment vote and 13 percent of state delegate equivalents .
Yang , who had 5 percent in initial preferences , ended up with only 1 percent in the final @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1 percent of state delegate equivalents .
The numbers in Iowa might shift a little when all precincts are finally reporting , but the overall picture is unlikely to change .
Sanders and Buttigieg had good nights .
Warren did OK. And Biden will almost certainly wind up with a disappointing percentage .
That probably means the next few weeks of the primary will be all about how well Biden can recover .
Make sure to check out FiveThirtyEight ’ s Democratic primary forecast in full ( once it ’ s unfrozen , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you can also see all the 2020 primary polls we ’ ve collected , including national polls , New Hampshire polls , Nevada polls and South Carolina polls .

UPDATE (Feb. 5, 2020, 2:30 p.m.): At around 2 p.m. Eastern, the Iowa Democratic Party released more results from about 70 precincts, taking us from 71 percent precincts reporting to 75 percent. However, it did not significantly change any candidates’ numbers. Sanders still leads in initial and final vote preference, but Buttigieg leads in state delegate equivalents.
After a frustrating Monday night when we got almost no results from the Iowa caucuses, we now have partial results. At around 5 p.m. Eastern Tuesday, the Iowa Democratic Party released the results from 62 percent of Iowa’s caucus sites; a few more results trickled in later in the evening. As of Wednesday morning, with about 71 percent of precincts reporting at least some results, here’s where the three measures of the vote — initial preference, final preference and state delegate equivalents — stood.
Preliminary results from the Iowa caucuses First alignment, final alignment and state delegate equivalents (SDEs) in the Iowa Democratic caucuses with about 71 percent of precincts reporting FIRST ALIGNMENT FINAL ALIGNMENT SDE Buttigieg 21% 25% 27% Sanders 24 26 25 Warren 19 21 18 Biden 15 13 15 Klobuchar 13 13 13 Yang 5 1 1 Steyer 2 0 0 Uncommitted 1 1 0 Gabbard 0 0 0 Bennet 0 0 0 Patrick 0 0 0 Bloomberg 0 0 0 Source: Iowa Democratic Party
So far, Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading in the two counts of the popular vote, the first and final alignments. Twenty-four percent of caucusgoers supported him on the initial ballot, 3 points higher than the runner-up, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In the final realignment vote — after supporters of candidates who didn’t meet the viability threshold (usually 15 percent of the vote at a caucus site) are allowed to switch to another candidate — Sanders had 26 percent and only a 1-point lead on Buttigieg. But Buttigieg is currently pulling more state delegate equivalents (27 percent of them), which is what determines the number of Democratic National Convention delegates a candidate receives out of Iowa. That split results from Buttigieg doing well in rural counties, which have a lot of delegates relative to their population, while Sanders ran up big margins in urban areas and college towns, which punch a bit below their weight in terms of delegates.
Of course, with about 29 percent of precincts yet to report, these are not the final numbers. They’re probably in the right ballpark, though. The precincts that are reporting come from all 99 of Iowa’s counties, and they should be pretty representative of this homogenous state. For example, The New York Times’s (in)famous “needle” — essentially a model that uses early election returns to estimate the results in outstanding precincts and thus predict a final outcome — expects Sanders to hold onto his popular-vote leads and Buttigieg to stay ahead in the delegate count.
If so, it seems like clear good news for the Sanders and Buttigieg campaigns, although the former remains significantly more likely to win the Democratic nomination. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is currently in third by all three measures, got more of a neutral result. Former Vice President Joe Biden turned in a weaker-than-expected performance, however. So far, he has gotten just 13 percent of the post-realignment vote — toward the lower end of his likely range according to our Iowa primary forecast and just half of the 26 percent our model had him winning on average. For comparison, Sanders, Buttigieg and Warren are all currently overshooting their average vote share per the FiveThirtyEight forecast. (Quick programming note: Our forecast is still frozen — that is, we’re not updating it with new data — until we get more final results from Iowa.)
Which candidate is spinning Iowa caucuses insanity best? + 538 Has Internships!
Outside of those top four, only Sen. Amy Klobuchar and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang received a significant share of votes or state delegate equivalents. Klobuchar currently has 13 percent of the post-realignment vote and 13 percent of state delegate equivalents. Yang, who had 5 percent in initial preferences, ended up with only 1 percent in the final realignment. But he still currently has 1 percent of state delegate equivalents.
The numbers in Iowa might shift a little when all precincts are finally reporting, but the overall picture is unlikely to change. Sanders and Buttigieg had good nights. Warren did OK. And Biden will almost certainly wind up with a disappointing percentage. That probably means the next few weeks of the primary will be all about how well Biden can recover.
Make sure to check out FiveThirtyEight’s Democratic primary forecast in full (once it’s unfrozen, of course); in the meantime, you can also see all the 2020 primary polls we’ve collected, including national polls, New Hampshire polls, Nevada polls and South Carolina polls.


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-04--What Did — And Didn’t — Go Down In The Iowa Caucuses

What Did — And Didn ’ t — Go Down In The Iowa Caucuses

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fivethirtyeight--2020-02-06--Politics Podcast: What We Know About The Democratic Primary After Iowa

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast crew considers how the results — so far — of the Iowa caucuses will affect the @ @ @ @ @ also checks in on the campaigning underway in New Hampshire and debates the meaning of @ @ @ @ @ to acquit President Trump .
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “ @ @ @ @ @ audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your @ @ @ @ @ you are new to podcasts , learn how to listen .
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast @ @ @ @ @ Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes @ @ @ @ @ question or suggestion for “ good polling vs. bad polling ” ?
Get in touch @ @ @ @ @ or in the comments .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast crew considers how the results (so far) of the Iowa caucuses will affect the Democratic primary. The team also checks in on the campaigning that’s underway in New Hampshire and debates the meaning of the Senate’s vote to acquit President Trump.
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: The results in Iowa.
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-07--Election Update: What The First Few Post-Iowa Polls Say

Our 2020 primary model looks at the race sequentially : When a primary or caucus is complete , the model will try to anticipate whose support will rise or fall based on the result .
Even before the mess in Iowa , though , where both Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders have claimed victory , we advised readers to interpret these projections provisionally — the model estimates how a contest will affect each candidate ’ s chances but will update those estimates once new polls come out .
So how are the model ’ s post-Iowa estimates looking now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new polls since Iowa ?
Pretty good , actually .
Let ’ s run through the latest surveys and what they mean .
Most of the new polls we ’ ve gotten have come in New Hampshire , which votes on Tuesday .
There , Buttigieg has gotten a but of a bounce ; the former South Bend , Indiana , mayor ’ s chances of winning the Granite State are up to 1 in 5 , from about 1 in 8 before Iowa .
A new Monmouth University survey of New Hampshire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 24 percent and Buttigieg in second with 20 percent .
Two tracking polls in New Hampshire from Emerson College and Boston Globe/Suffolk University out Wednesday also found Buttigieg in second to Sanders .
Those polls also seemed to confirm the bad news for Biden , as his fourth-place showing in Iowa has really hurt his standing in our forecast .
The two tracking polls in New Hampshire both put him at 12 percent , well behind Sanders and Buttigieg .
Meanwhile , a series of national polls from Morning Consult measuring preferences each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , showed Biden ’ s standing in falling from 29 percent to 24 percent .
This was largely in line with what the model anticipated but still hardly qualifies as great news for him .
How representative New Hampshire will be for the race overall is still an open question — it just happens to be where we have the freshest data .
Perhaps the Morning Consult polls suggest that Biden ’ s post-Iowa support will be more durable nationally , and in more diverse states , than in a mostly white state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national polling will show a more drastic decline .
Buttigieg has the reverse problem ( or opportunity ) : The New Hampshire polls show him gaining ground after his Iowa performance , but his chances of winning a majority of pledged delegates overall haven ’ t improved much .
Morning Consult ’ s polling showed him gaining ground , from 7 percent to 12 percent .
But 12 percent isn ’ t good for much .
A YouGov poll released Wednesday had him at just 9 percent — not much changed from previous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expand his coalition , including to non-white voters , to stand much of a chance in contests beyond Iowa and New Hampshire .
So let ’ s get back to the model .
Our forecast now gives Sanders about a 1 in 2 chance of winning a majority of pledged delegates .
The second likeliest outcome ( 1 in 4 chance ) is that no candidate wins a majority .
After that , the next-strongest candidate is former Vice President Joe Biden , who has roughly a 1 in 5 shot ( 20 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ currently above 5 percent , including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Buttigieg , the former mayor of South Bend , Indiana ( 5 percent and 3 percent , respectively ) .
But much of the movement in the model over the past 24 hours — including further gains for Sanders — has actually come from inputting the shifting results from Iowa , which have been trickling in from the state Democratic Party .
For instance , when we restarted the model on Wednesday with partial Iowa results , Sanders ’ s chances of winning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to 39 percent .
Biden ’ s chances fell from 43 percent to 19 percent .
And Warren ’ s and Buttigieg ’ s chances went up , from 5 percent to 9 percent and 4 percent to 6 percent , respectively .
Then another vote update in the wee hours of Thursday morning moved Sanders into a near-tie with Buttigieg for the Iowa lead in state delegate equivalents ( Sanders already led the first and final preference vote counts ) .
In turn , our model gave Sanders more of an Iowa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , raising Sanders from a roughly 2 in 5 chance to about a 1 in 2 shot of winning a majority of pledged delegates .
Truth be told , we still don ’ t have that much post-Iowa polling , so the forecast could definitely shift in the coming days if fresh surveys show more gains or losses for these leading candidates .
For now , though , the Iowa results have made Sanders the front-runner to win the Democratic nomination , and the new polls we have generally agree .
Though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iowa is simply how wide-open and uncertain the race is : No single candidate has better than a 50 percent shot to win a pledged-delegate majority , and there ’ s a 1 in 4 chance that we get through all the primaries and caucuses without anyone getting there .

Our 2020 primary model looks at the race sequentially: When a primary or caucus is complete, the model will try to anticipate whose support will rise or fall based on the result. Even before the mess in Iowa, though, where both Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders have claimed victory, we advised readers to interpret these projections provisionally — the model estimates how a contest will affect each candidate’s chances but will update those estimates once new polls come out.
So how are the model’s post-Iowa estimates looking now that we’ve gotten a few new polls since Iowa? Pretty good, actually. Let’s run through the latest surveys and what they mean.
Most of the new polls we’ve gotten have come in New Hampshire, which votes on Tuesday. There, Buttigieg has gotten a bit of a bounce; the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s chances of winning the Granite State are up to 1 in 5, from about 1 in 8 before Iowa. A new Monmouth University survey of New Hampshire conducted Feb. 3-5 found Sanders leading with 24 percent and Buttigieg in second with 20 percent. Two tracking polls in New Hampshire from Emerson College and Boston Globe/Suffolk University out Wednesday also found Buttigieg in second to Sanders.
Those polls also seemed to confirm the bad news for Biden, as his fourth-place showing in Iowa has really hurt his standing in our forecast. The two tracking polls in New Hampshire both put him at 12 percent, well behind Sanders and Buttigieg. Meanwhile, a series of national polls from Morning Consult measuring preferences each day between Feb. 3 and Feb. 5, showed Biden’s standing in falling from 29 percent to 24 percent. This was largely in line with what the model anticipated but still hardly qualifies as great news for him.
How representative New Hampshire will be for the race overall is still an open question — it just happens to be where we have the freshest data. Perhaps the Morning Consult polls suggest that Biden’s post-Iowa support will be more durable nationally, and in more diverse states, than in a mostly white state like New Hampshire. Or maybe more national polling will show a more drastic decline.
Buttigieg has the reverse problem (or opportunity): The New Hampshire polls show him gaining ground after his Iowa performance, but his chances of winning a majority of pledged delegates overall haven’t improved much. Morning Consult’s polling showed him gaining ground, from 7 percent to 12 percent. But 12 percent isn’t good for much. A YouGov poll released Wednesday had him at just 9 percent — not much changed from previous YouGov surveys. Buttigieg will need to expand his coalition, including to non-white voters, to stand much of a chance in contests beyond Iowa and New Hampshire.
***
So let’s get back to the model. Our forecast now gives Sanders about a 1 in 2 chance of winning a majority of pledged delegates. The second likeliest outcome (1 in 4 chance) is that no candidate wins a majority. After that, the next-strongest candidate is former Vice President Joe Biden, who has roughly a 1 in 5 shot (20 percent). No other candidate is currently above 5 percent, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana (5 percent and 3 percent, respectively).
But much of the movement in the model over the past 24 hours — including further gains for Sanders — has actually come from inputting the shifting results from Iowa, which have been trickling in from the state Democratic Party. For instance, when we restarted the model on Wednesday with partial Iowa results, Sanders’s chances of winning a delegate majority rose from 31 percent to 39 percent. Biden’s chances fell from 43 percent to 19 percent. And Warren’s and Buttigieg’s chances went up, from 5 percent to 9 percent and 4 percent to 6 percent, respectively.
Then another vote update in the wee hours of Thursday morning moved Sanders into a near-tie with Buttigieg for the Iowa lead in state delegate equivalents (Sanders already led the first and final preference vote counts). In turn, our model gave Sanders more of an Iowa bounce (and Buttigieg less of one), raising Sanders from a roughly 2 in 5 chance to about a 1 in 2 shot of winning a majority of pledged delegates.
Truth be told, we still don’t have that much post-Iowa polling, so the forecast could definitely shift in the coming days if fresh surveys show more gains or losses for these leading candidates. For now, though, the Iowa results have made Sanders the front-runner to win the Democratic nomination, and the new polls we have generally agree. Though maybe the true headline coming out of Iowa is simply how wide-open and uncertain the race is: No single candidate has better than a 50 percent shot to win a pledged-delegate majority, and there’s a 1 in 4 chance that we get through all the primaries and caucuses without anyone getting there.


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-06--7 Candidates Have Qualified For The New Hampshire Democratic Debate

As if we haven ’ t had enough drama this week with Iowa ’ s delayed vote count , there ’ s also a debate tomorrow in New Hampshire before the primary on Tuesday .
It ’ s going to be a bigger stage , too , with seven candidates — one more than in the Iowa debate last month .
The qualification saga for Friday ’ s event is a bit anticlimactic , though , because it seems as if every candidate will have qualified by Jan. 26 .
That day , tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang got his fourth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seventh candidate to make the stage .
He joins the six contenders who debated last month in Iowa , and it seems unlikely at this point that anyone else will make the cut : As a refresher , candidates needed to reach 5 percent support in at least four national polls or early-state surveys in New Hampshire , Nevada and South Carolina , or 7 percent support in at least two early-state polls from qualifying polling organizations .
Candidates qualifying via the polling path also needed at least 225,000 unique donors , including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 20 states or territories .
But regardless of how well they polled , candidates had another way to qualify for this round : winning at least one national delegate via the Iowa caucuses .
In this case , that didn ’ t make a difference , because everyone who got delegates had already qualified via polls and donors .
Instead , the real debate drama may be over the qualification criteria for the next debate in Nevada on Feb. 19 , which has already upset some candidates and activists .
Most notably , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the donor requirement that it had used some variant of for the first eight debates .
But while that barrier has been dropped , the polling mark needed for qualification has gotten much higher .
Candidates must now reach 10 percent support in at least four national polls or early-state surveys in Nevada and South Carolina , or 12 percent support in at least two early-state polls .
They can also qualify if they win at least one national delegate via the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary .
But outrage over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ DNC ’ s decision to forego the donor requirement , which critics interpret as a way to allow former New York City Mayor Bloomberg to qualify even though he ’ s self-funding his campaign and , as of the latest Federal Election Commission update , had reported taking $ 0 in contributions .
For its part , the DNC denies that this rule change was made with Bloomberg or any other candidate in mind .
“ With the primary underway , we are assessing a candidate ’ s support through a significantly higher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” said Adrienne Watson , deputy communications director for the DNC .
“ We were always planning to do this , we signaled it many times , it is not designed to benefit any one candidate and every candidate has an equal opportunity to qualify.
” It ’ s worth looking at how much this rule change helps — or doesn ’ t help — Bloomberg .
After all , he isn ’ t actively competing in the early states , so he ’ s unlikely to win any delegates there or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which means he ’ d need four national polls with at least 10 percent support to qualify .
And so far , he has just one qualifying poll .
It ’ s not clear that he can actually get three more in the next two weeks because there ’ s no guarantee his poll numbers will improve after Iowa and New Hampshire ; if anything , his numbers may plateau — or dip — if voters start moving toward candidates who have already won votes .
Not to mention , candidates who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New Hampshire are guaranteed a spot at the Las Vegas event , which means someone like Sen. Amy Klobuchar , who is polling behind Bloomberg nationally , has likely already secured a spot .
Here are the five contenders in line to be on stage later this month : Despite all the uproar over Nevada ’ s debate criteria , it might not actually be good for Bloomberg if he qualifies .
So far he ’ s largely been standing on the sidelines of the race spending millions on ads , which hasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to highlight the parts of his record that may make him less appealing to Democratic voters , including his past support for stop-and-frisk policies that targeted people of color , his party-switching ( from Democrat to Republican to independent back to Democrat ) and his endorsement of past Republicans such as President George W. Bush .
Perhaps qualifying for the debate will put pressure on Bloomberg to participate , giving other Democrats a prime time opportunity to take shots at his vulnerabilities .
But it ’ s not actually clear whether Bloomberg would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even if he did make it — he ’ s not on the ballot in Nevada and his current strategy seems to be working fairly well for him .
But Nevada is still ages away in primary-time , and we ’ ve first got a debate tomorrow in New Hampshire that will be the first post-Iowa faceoff .
And how the candidates perform on that stage could help determine whether they ’ ll be around for the Nevada event , regardless of whether Bloomberg is in it or not .

As if we haven’t had enough drama this week with Iowa’s delayed vote count, there’s also a debate tomorrow in New Hampshire before the primary on Tuesday. It’s going to be a bigger stage, too, with seven candidates — one more than in the Iowa debate last month. The qualification saga for Friday’s event is a bit anticlimactic, though, because it seems as if every candidate will have qualified by Jan. 26. That day, tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang got his fourth and final qualifying poll to become the seventh candidate to make the stage. He joins the six contenders who debated last month in Iowa, and it seems unlikely at this point that anyone else will make the cut:
Seven candidates have made the New Hampshire debate Democratic presidential candidates by whether they’ve qualified for the New Hampshire debate, as of Feb. 6 at 11:30 a.m. QUALIFYING POLLS MET THRESHOLD FOR … CANDIDATE All ≥5% EARLY STATE ≥7% POLLS 225K+ DONORS 1+ IOWA DELEGATES QUALIFIED Joe Biden 15 7 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Bernie Sanders 15 7 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Elizabeth Warren 15 7 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Pete Buttigieg 14 5 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Amy Klobuchar 8 2 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Andrew Yang 6 0 ✓ ✓ ✓ Tom Steyer 3 3 ✓ ✓ ✓ Michael Bloomberg 7 0 ✓ Tulsi Gabbard 2 0 ✓ Michael Bennet 0 0 Deval Patrick 0 0 For candidates considered “major” by FiveThirtyEight. To qualify for the eighth debate, a candidate must reach 5 percent support in at least four national or early-state polls, or 7 percent support in at least two early-state polls from qualifying polling organizations. Candidates must also have at least 225,000 unique donors, including at least 1,000 donors in at least 20 states or territories. Separately, candidates can also qualify if they won at least one national delegate via the Iowa caucuses. Information released by campaigns is used to determine whether a candidate has hit the donor threshold. If a campaign announced it had reached 225,000 donors but did not say whether it had at least 1,000 donors in 20 states or territories, we assumed that it had met the latter requirement, too. Sources: POLLS, CAMPAIGNS, MEDIA REPORTS
As a refresher, candidates needed to reach 5 percent support in at least four national polls or early-state surveys in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, or 7 percent support in at least two early-state polls from qualifying polling organizations. Candidates qualifying via the polling path also needed at least 225,000 unique donors, including at least 1,000 donors in at least 20 states or territories. But regardless of how well they polled, candidates had another way to qualify for this round: winning at least one national delegate via the Iowa caucuses. In this case, that didn’t make a difference, because everyone who got delegates had already qualified via polls and donors.
Instead, the real debate drama may be over the qualification criteria for the next debate in Nevada on Feb. 19, which has already upset some candidates and activists. Most notably, the Democratic National Committee has now abandoned the donor requirement that it had used some variant of for the first eight debates. But while that barrier has been dropped, the polling mark needed for qualification has gotten much higher. Candidates must now reach 10 percent support in at least four national polls or early-state surveys in Nevada and South Carolina, or 12 percent support in at least two early-state polls. They can also qualify if they win at least one national delegate via the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary.
But outrage over the Nevada rules mainly stems from the DNC’s decision to forego the donor requirement, which critics interpret as a way to allow former New York City Mayor Bloomberg to qualify even though he’s self-funding his campaign and, as of the latest Federal Election Commission update, had reported taking $0 in contributions. For its part, the DNC denies that this rule change was made with Bloomberg or any other candidate in mind. “With the primary underway, we are assessing a candidate’s support through a significantly higher polling threshold and through actual election results,” said Adrienne Watson, deputy communications director for the DNC. “We were always planning to do this, we signaled it many times, it is not designed to benefit any one candidate and every candidate has an equal opportunity to qualify.”
It’s worth looking at how much this rule change helps — or doesn’t help — Bloomberg. After all, he isn’t actively competing in the early states, so he’s unlikely to win any delegates there or clear the 12 percent early-state polling threshold, which means he’d need four national polls with at least 10 percent support to qualify. And so far, he has just one qualifying poll. It’s not clear that he can actually get three more in the next two weeks because there’s no guarantee his poll numbers will improve after Iowa and New Hampshire; if anything, his numbers may plateau — or dip — if voters start moving toward candidates who have already won votes. Not to mention, candidates who have won national delegates from Iowa and New Hampshire are guaranteed a spot at the Las Vegas event, which means someone like Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is polling behind Bloomberg nationally, has likely already secured a spot. Here are the five contenders in line to be on stage later this month:
Five candidates have made the Nevada debate so far Democratic presidential candidates by whether they’ve qualified for the Nevada debate, as of Feb. 6 at 11:30 a.m. QUALIFYING POLLS MET THRESHOLD FOR … CANDIDATE All ≥10% EARLY STATE ≥12% POLLS 1+ IA/NH DELEGATES QUALIFIED Joe Biden 6 0 ✓ ✓ ✓ Bernie Sanders 6 0 ✓ ✓ ✓ Elizabeth Warren 6 0 ✓ ✓ ✓ Pete Buttigieg 1 0 ✓ ✓ Amy Klobuchar 0 0 ✓ ✓ Andrew Yang 0 0 Tom Steyer 0 0 Michael Bloomberg 1 0 Tulsi Gabbard 0 0 Michael Bennet 0 0 Deval Patrick 0 0 For candidates considered “major” by FiveThirtyEight. To qualify for the ninth debate, a candidate must reach 10 percent support in at least four national or early-state polls in Nevada and South Carolina, or 12 percent support in at least two early-state polls from qualifying polling organizations. Separately, candidates can also qualify if they won at least one national delegate via the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary. Sources: POLLS, CAMPAIGNS, MEDIA REPORTS
Despite all the uproar over Nevada’s debate criteria, it might not actually be good for Bloomberg if he qualifies. So far he’s largely been standing on the sidelines of the race spending millions on ads, which hasn’t given other candidates much chance to highlight the parts of his record that may make him less appealing to Democratic voters, including his past support for stop-and-frisk policies that targeted people of color, his party-switching (from Democrat to Republican to independent back to Democrat) and his endorsement of past Republicans such as President George W. Bush. Perhaps qualifying for the debate will put pressure on Bloomberg to participate, giving other Democrats a prime time opportunity to take shots at his vulnerabilities. But it’s not actually clear whether Bloomberg would choose to join the Las Vegas debate even if he did make it — he’s not on the ballot in Nevada and his current strategy seems to be working fairly well for him.
But Nevada is still ages away in primary-time, and we’ve first got a debate tomorrow in New Hampshire that will be the first post-Iowa faceoff. And how the candidates perform on that stage could help determine whether they’ll be around for the Nevada event, regardless of whether Bloomberg is in it or not.


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-06--Satellite Caucuses Give A Surprise Boost To Sanders In Iowa

In a stunning turn of events , Sen. Bernie Sanders is threatening to take the lead in the measure of Iowa Democratic caucus results that has traditionally been used to declare a winner .
After a vote update late last night , former South Bend , Indiana , Mayor Pete Buttigieg now leads Sanders by only three state delegate equivalents .
In percentage terms , that ’ s 26.2 percent to 26.1 percent — significantly tighter than the 2-point race it was earlier in the day on Wednesday .
With 97 percent of precincts now reporting , here are the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , first alignment voter preference and final alignment voter preference : There ’ s now real suspense over whether Sanders or Buttigieg will finish first by state delegate equivalents .
On one hand , it doesn ’ t matter that much as both candidates will get more national convention delegates that their competitors .
On the other hand , there is a psychological boost ( not to mention a hefty dose of media buzz ) that comes with finishing first .
And up until this point , Buttigieg has largely been treated as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even though Sanders has led in both measures of the popular vote in Iowa .
If Sanders were also to lead on the state delegate equivalents metric , however , that would remove any ambiguity caused by a split verdict .
So how has Sanders pulled even with Buttigieg ?
By doing extremely well at satellite caucuses , or the alternative caucus sites for people who couldn ’ t make a regular caucus ( e.g.
, people who live out of state , or locals who simply couldn ’ t go on Monday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among caucus sites because they aren ’ t worth a set number of state delegate equivalents ; instead , each satellite caucus ’ s state-delegate-equivalent value is determined by how many people attended it .
A savvy campaign might have realized the potential to run up its state-delegate-equivalent score by encouraging its supporters to attend satellite caucuses , and that seems to be what the Sanders campaign did ; according to The Intercept , it devoted a lot of effort to getting out the vote at satellite sites , while no other campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it paid off : So far , Sanders has gotten 21.855 state delegate equivalents out of the satellite caucus sites , and Buttigieg has gotten 1.196 .
Until last night , each new batch of results was barely changing the candidates ’ vote shares , and we ( and pretty much everyone else ) assumed that the remaining precincts in Iowa were representative of the rest of the state .
But the satellite caucuses were clearly not representative , and that is why Sanders now has a shot at being the sole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still hold on .
We are now awaiting the results in just 54 Iowa precincts .
About a dozen of those are satellite caucuses , which could be enough to put Sanders over the top — but the remainder are regular old caucus sites , where Buttigieg is expected to do well .
And then there have been reports of minor errors in the way delegates are being allocated , which normally wouldn ’ t make a huge difference , but in a race decided by only a few state delegate equivalents , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a regular election where the margins are razor thin and officials move to a recount , you can expect these results to be closely audited , maybe even challenged by the campaigns .
So even though we could have results from all precincts very soon , we may not know the “ true ” winner in Iowa ( by the state delegate equivalents measure ) for quite some time .

UPDATE (Feb. 7, 2020, 8:28 a.m.): With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Buttigieg still leads Sanders by 1.5 state delegate equivalents. However, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has called for a recanvass of the results, which appear to have misallocated some delegates. And the Associated Press has announced it will not declare a winner for the foreseeable future, so it could be awhile before we have a final verdict on who won Iowa.
In a stunning turn of events, Sen. Bernie Sanders is threatening to take the lead in the measure of Iowa Democratic caucus results that has traditionally been used to declare a winner. After a vote update late last night, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg now leads Sanders by only three state delegate equivalents. In percentage terms, that’s 26.2 percent to 26.1 percent — significantly tighter than the 2-point race it was earlier in the day on Wednesday.
With 97 percent of precincts now reporting, here are the full results, including state delegate equivalents, first alignment voter preference and final alignment voter preference:
Preliminary results from the Iowa caucuses First alignment, final alignment and state delegate equivalents (SDEs) in the Iowa Democratic caucuses with about 97 percent of precincts reporting FIRST ALIGNMENT FINAL ALIGNMENT SDE Buttigieg 21% 25% 26% Sanders 25 27 26 Warren 19 20 18 Biden 15 14 16 Klobuchar 13 12 12 Yang 5 1 1 Steyer 2 0 0 Uncommitted 1 1 0 Patrick 0 0 0 Gabbard 0 0 0 Bennet 0 0 0 Bloomberg 0 0 0 Source: Iowa Democratic Party
There’s now real suspense over whether Sanders or Buttigieg will finish first by state delegate equivalents. On one hand, it doesn’t matter that much as both candidates will get more national convention delegates that their competitors. On the other hand, there is a psychological boost (not to mention a hefty dose of media buzz) that comes with finishing first. And up until this point, Buttigieg has largely been treated as the winner of Iowa by the media even though Sanders has led in both measures of the popular vote in Iowa. If Sanders were also to lead on the state delegate equivalents metric, however, that would remove any ambiguity caused by a split verdict.
So how has Sanders pulled even with Buttigieg? By doing extremely well at satellite caucuses, or the alternative caucus sites for people who couldn’t make a regular caucus (e.g., people who live out of state, or locals who simply couldn’t go on Monday evening). Satellite caucuses are unique among caucus sites because they aren’t worth a set number of state delegate equivalents; instead, each satellite caucus’s state-delegate-equivalent value is determined by how many people attended it.
A savvy campaign might have realized the potential to run up its state-delegate-equivalent score by encouraging its supporters to attend satellite caucuses, and that seems to be what the Sanders campaign did; according to The Intercept, it devoted a lot of effort to getting out the vote at satellite sites, while no other campaign paid the satellites much heed. Apparently, it paid off: So far, Sanders has gotten 21.855 state delegate equivalents out of the satellite caucus sites, and Buttigieg has gotten 1.196.
Until last night, each new batch of results was barely changing the candidates’ vote shares, and we (and pretty much everyone else) assumed that the remaining precincts in Iowa were representative of the rest of the state. But the satellite caucuses were clearly not representative, and that is why Sanders now has a shot at being the sole victor in Iowa.
But Buttigieg could still hold on. We are now awaiting the results in just 54 Iowa precincts. About a dozen of those are satellite caucuses, which could be enough to put Sanders over the top — but the remainder are regular old caucus sites, where Buttigieg is expected to do well. And then there have been reports of minor errors in the way delegates are being allocated, which normally wouldn’t make a huge difference, but in a race decided by only a few state delegate equivalents, it very well might. Just like in a regular election where the margins are razor thin and officials move to a recount, you can expect these results to be closely audited, maybe even challenged by the campaigns. So even though we could have results from all precincts very soon, we may not know the “true” winner in Iowa (by the state delegate equivalents measure) for quite some time.
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: The results in Iowa.


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-05--What Happens When An Impeached President Runs For Reelection?

The U.S. Senate acquitted President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on Wednesday — the end of a trial that lasted about three weeks .
The chamber ’ s Republicans blocked Democratic motions to call witnesses during the trial and then voted to acquit Trump .
The votes were almost entirely along party lines .
All 47 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents voted for both articles of impeachment .
Mitt Romney of Utah was the only senator from either party to break party ranks , voting in favor of the abuse of power article and against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were 48-52 against the abuse of power charge , and 47-53 against the obstruction charge .
Trump is only the third president to be impeached in U.S. history .
He is also the third president to be acquitted in the Senate .
( Richard Nixon is not one of the three , as he resigned before a full House vote or Senate trial . )
Trump is the first president , however , who will run in a general election after an impeachment and acquittal — Andrew Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but didn ’ t win , and Bill Clinton could not run after his impeachment and acquittal because of term limits .
In other words , the circumstances of Trump ’ s impeachment are unique .
Viewed narrowly , nothing has really changed — Trump remains in office , and is likely to continue to disregard traditional norms and , at times , core democratic values .
His approval rating isn ’ t great , but it hasn ’ t meaningfully gone up or down during the impeachment process .
But in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reelection , the impeachment process has a number of important implications .
1 .
Trump could feel he has license to do whatever he wants till November — and beyond There is clear evidence that Trump , using both his official government aides and his private lawyer , Rudy Giuliani , postponed both a White House visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine as he pushed for the Ukrainians to announce an investigation of the Bidens .
So the Republicans in the House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ join with Democrats to force Trump from office , have effectively exonerated the president for actions that are arguably both illegal ( according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office ) and authoritarian ( according to experts on authoritarianism ) .
By leaving Trump in office , Republicans have to some extent also validated the very expansive views of the president ’ s authority and power that Trump ’ s lawyers invoked in defending him against impeachment .
Republicans in Congress also essentially consented to the president circumventing the legislative branch .
Congress authorized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ refused to release it unless Ukraine complied with a condition ( investigate the Bidens ) that Congress likely never would have sanctioned .
Giuliani essentially was directing U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine , even though he was not confirmed by Congress , and Congress did not know the extent of his involvement until it was discovered by the press .
So post-acquittal , what will Trump do next ?
Does he withhold foreign aid from other nations if they refuse to investigate the eventual Democratic nominee ?
Does Trump ’ s administration , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ document requests during the House ’ s impeachment investigation , basically disregard any future attempts at congressional oversight ?
Have Republicans in Congress left the country and the world with an American president who believes he is essentially above the law ?
The stakes here are enormous .
The answer to those questions , in my view , is maybe , as opposed to a clear yes .
Remember , one of the defenses of Trump by congressional Republicans throughout this process has been that Ukraine eventually did get the military aid .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sept. 11 , two days after the House announced it was opening an inquiry into the president ’ s actions regarding Ukraine .
So it ’ s not clear that Republicans in Congress have actually condoned the idea that aid to other countries from the U.S. can or should be conditioned on those nations agreeing to investigate Trump ’ s political rivals .
And perhaps Trump won ’ t actually push another foreign government to investigate a rival because he wants to avoid criticism , minimize the potential for a second impeachment or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s improper .
So Trump may not have a full green light to do whatever he wants .
But it ’ s closer to green than it is to red .
2 .
The GOP is fully , totally aligned with Trump No Republicans in the House and only one in the Senate ( Romney ) voted for Trump ’ s impeachment or removal .
Influential voices in the party , such as GOP governors and Fox News anchors , stood by him throughout the process .
Fewer than 10 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s removal .
Other than Sens .
Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Romney , there were few prominent GOP voices who stated unequivocally that it was inappropriate for the president and his team to give any suggestion to Ukraine that U.S. aid would be tied to an investigation of the Bidens .
For some Republicans , this loyalty to Trump contradicts one of the core goals of most politicians : winning reelection .
Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado , for example , is up for reelection in November in a Democratic-leaning state where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not only voted against Trump ’ s removal , but took a strong , public stance against having witnesses in the trial .
But Gardner and other senators seeking to retain seats Democrats are targeting this November , such as Susan Collins of Maine and Martha McSally of Arizona , may have played the politics of impeachment smartly .
In a party where loyalty to Trump is highly valued , creating any real distance between you and the president may cost you Republican votes that you absolutely must have to win .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ d pick up independent or Democratic votes in the bargain .
In fact , given current levels of negative partisanship — where supporters of one party hate the other party more than they like their own — picking up support from anti-Trump voters seems highly unlikely .
Democrats were leery of pushing for impeachment for much of 2019 , amid the investigation of Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller .
In Democrats ’ view , a partisan impeachment backfired on congressional Republicans in the last few years of the Clinton presidency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ similar backlash .
I think that interpretation of the Clinton impeachment is a bit off .
Republicans won control of the House , Senate and presidency in the 2000 elections , with Al Gore distancing himself from Clinton , who Gore viewed as a controversial figure in part because of the impeachment process .
Democrats felt forced to push for impeachment after Trump ’ s actions towards Ukraine became public .
The impeachment process ended up with party-line votes , a result House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted to avoid .
But there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats .
According to FiveThirtyEight ’ s trackers , Democrats lead on the congressional generic ballot , about half of Americans support removing Trump from office and Trump remains fairly unpopular .
4 .
The 2020 election will be all-out partisan war OK , you might say that we knew this already , and maybe we did .
But congressional Democrats have , in their actions and words , suggested that Trump is unfit to be president and should be removed .
Trump , through his actions and words , has shown that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power .
Already , America can at times feel like it ’ s in a non-military civil war , with two competing coalitions that question not just the other coalition ’ s policy views , but its values and its Americanness .
A Democratic nominee , particularly Biden , is likely to campaign on the idea that he or she is the last defense against Trump turning America into a less democratic and tolerant nation .
Trump rose to power as the champion of people who felt aggrieved and ignored by an increasingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump is likely to make acting aggrieved even more a core part of his message — with the president likely to cite his own impeachment as example of how and his supporters must defend themselves against an out-of-control American left .
5 .
The problems with America ’ s democracy have been on full display There ’ s an active debate among scholars and journalists about whether to describe American politics by focusing on polarization ( the two sides are really divided ) or by focusing on the radicalization of the Republican Party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the division ) .
Another disagreement is whether American voters are really divided or if the division exists mainly among political elites .
The impeachment process shows how these ideas are all interconnected — and how it ’ s hard to tell a simple story about what ’ s wrong with America ’ s democracy and who is to blame .
Trump ’ s actions toward Ukraine were radical — Barack Obama did not try to have a foreign government investigate Romney in 2012 .
Republican elites generally defended Trump ’ s conduct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polls showed some wariness about Trump ’ s actions toward Ukraine among a sizable bloc of GOP voters ( about a fourth in some polls ) .
That Trump skeptic , however , wasn ’ t really represented on Fox News or Capitol Hill .
So Republican politicians and Trump are probably driving polarization but also responding to GOP voters , who choose Trump over more than a dozen more traditional candidates in 2016 and still strongly approve of him now .
Post-impeachment , we are left with a lot of unknowns that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the American president allow a truly free and fair election ?
Has he created a precedent where future presidents will use government power to investigate their political rivals ?
If he wins a second term , what other democratic norms and values will he flout ?
CORRECTION ( Feb. 6 , 2020 , 10:16 a.m. ) : An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Andrew Johnson did not run for president after his impeachment in 1868 .
In fact , after serving out the remainder of Abraham Lincoln ’ s term @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1868 but was not a general election candidate .

Perry Bacon Jr. (perry.bacon@fivethirtyeight.com)

The U.S. Senate acquitted President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on Wednesday — the end of a trial that lasted about three weeks. The chamber’s Republicans blocked Democratic motions to call witnesses during the trial and then voted to acquit Trump. The votes were almost entirely along party lines. All 47 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents voted for both articles of impeachment. Mitt Romney of Utah was the only senator from either party to break party ranks, voting in favor of the abuse of power article and against the obstruction charge.
The final votes were 48-52 against the abuse of power charge, and 47-53 against the obstruction charge.
Watch Mitt Romneyâs speech prior to Trumpâs acquittal
Trump is only the third president to be impeached in U.S. history. He is also the third president to be acquitted in the Senate. (Richard Nixon is not one of the three, as he resigned before a full House vote or Senate trial.)
Trump is the first president, however, who will run in a general election after an impeachment and acquittal — Andrew Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination after his impeachment and acquittal in 1868, but didn’t win, and Bill Clinton could not run after his impeachment and acquittal because of term limits.
In other words, the circumstances of Trump’s impeachment are unique. Viewed narrowly, nothing has really changed — Trump remains in office, and is likely to continue to disregard traditional norms and, at times, core democratic values. His approval rating isn’t great, but it hasn’t meaningfully gone up or down during the impeachment process. But in part because Trump will now run for reelection, the impeachment process has a number of important implications.
1. Trump could feel he has license to do whatever he wants till November — and beyond
There is clear evidence that Trump, using both his official government aides and his private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, postponed both a White House visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine as he pushed for the Ukrainians to announce an investigation of the Bidens. So the Republicans in the House and the Senate, by refusing to join with Democrats to force Trump from office, have effectively exonerated the president for actions that are arguably both illegal (according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office) and authoritarian (according to experts on authoritarianism). By leaving Trump in office, Republicans have to some extent also validated the very expansive views of the president’s authority and power that Trump’s lawyers invoked in defending him against impeachment.
Republicans in Congress also essentially consented to the president circumventing the legislative branch. Congress authorized military aid to Ukraine, but Trump refused to release it unless Ukraine complied with a condition (investigate the Bidens) that Congress likely never would have sanctioned. Giuliani essentially was directing U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine, even though he was not confirmed by Congress, and Congress did not know the extent of his involvement until it was discovered by the press.
So post-acquittal, what will Trump do next? Does he withhold foreign aid from other nations if they refuse to investigate the eventual Democratic nominee? Does Trump’s administration, which refused to comply with subpoenas and document requests during the House’s impeachment investigation, basically disregard any future attempts at congressional oversight? Have Republicans in Congress left the country and the world with an American president who believes he is essentially above the law? The stakes here are enormous.
The answer to those questions, in my view, is maybe, as opposed to a clear yes. Remember, one of the defenses of Trump by congressional Republicans throughout this process has been that Ukraine eventually did get the military aid. The White House released the aid on Sept. 11, two days after the House announced it was opening an inquiry into the president’s actions regarding Ukraine. So it’s not clear that Republicans in Congress have actually condoned the idea that aid to other countries from the U.S. can or should be conditioned on those nations agreeing to investigate Trump’s political rivals. And perhaps Trump won’t actually push another foreign government to investigate a rival because he wants to avoid criticism, minimize the potential for a second impeachment or, yes, because he now understands it’s improper.
So Trump may not have a full green light to do whatever he wants. But it’s closer to green than it is to red.
2. The GOP is fully, totally aligned with Trump
No Republicans in the House and only one in the Senate (Romney) voted for Trump’s impeachment or removal. Influential voices in the party, such as GOP governors and Fox News anchors, stood by him throughout the process. Fewer than 10 percent of Republican voters support the president’s removal. Other than Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Romney, there were few prominent GOP voices who stated unequivocally that it was inappropriate for the president and his team to give any suggestion to Ukraine that U.S. aid would be tied to an investigation of the Bidens.
For some Republicans, this loyalty to Trump contradicts one of the core goals of most politicians: winning reelection. Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, for example, is up for reelection in November in a Democratic-leaning state where Trump is not particularly popular.
He not only voted against Trump’s removal, but took a strong, public stance against having witnesses in the trial.
But Gardner and other senators seeking to retain seats Democrats are targeting this November, such as Susan Collins of Maine and Martha McSally of Arizona, may have played the politics of impeachment smartly. In a party where loyalty to Trump is highly valued, creating any real distance between you and the president may cost you Republican votes that you absolutely must have to win. And there’s no real guarantee that you’d pick up independent or Democratic votes in the bargain. In fact, given current levels of negative partisanship — where supporters of one party hate the other party more than they like their own — picking up support from anti-Trump voters seems highly unlikely.
3. Impeachment backlash hasn’t materialized
Democrats were leery of pushing for impeachment for much of 2019, amid the investigation of Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In Democrats’ view, a partisan impeachment backfired on congressional Republicans in the last few years of the Clinton presidency, and they wanted to avoid a similar backlash. I think that interpretation of the Clinton impeachment is a bit off. Republicans won control of the House, Senate and presidency in the 2000 elections, with Al Gore distancing himself from Clinton, who Gore viewed as a controversial figure in part because of the impeachment process.
Democrats felt forced to push for impeachment after Trump’s actions towards Ukraine became public. The impeachment process ended up with party-line votes, a result House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted to avoid. But there is little sign that voters have turned on Democrats. According to FiveThirtyEight’s trackers, Democrats lead on the congressional generic ballot, about half of Americans support removing Trump from office and Trump remains fairly unpopular.
4. The 2020 election will be all-out partisan war
OK, you might say that we knew this already, and maybe we did. But congressional Democrats have, in their actions and words, suggested that Trump is unfit to be president and should be removed. Trump, through his actions and words, has shown that he will do basically anything to keep power. Already, America can at times feel like it’s in a non-military civil war, with two competing coalitions that question not just the other coalition’s policy views, but its values and its Americanness.
A Democratic nominee, particularly Biden, is likely to campaign on the idea that he or she is the last defense against Trump turning America into a less democratic and tolerant nation. Trump rose to power as the champion of people who felt aggrieved and ignored by an increasingly liberal, multicultural America. Post-impeachment, Trump is likely to make acting aggrieved even more a core part of his message — with the president likely to cite his own impeachment as example of how and his supporters must defend themselves against an out-of-control American left.
5. The problems with America’s democracy have been on full display
There’s an active debate among scholars and journalists about whether to describe American politics by focusing on polarization (the two sides are really divided) or by focusing on the radicalization of the Republican Party (so one side is really causing the division). Another disagreement is whether American voters are really divided or if the division exists mainly among political elites.
The impeachment process shows how these ideas are all interconnected — and how it’s hard to tell a simple story about what’s wrong with America’s democracy and who is to blame. Trump’s actions toward Ukraine were radical — Barack Obama did not try to have a foreign government investigate Romney in 2012. Republican elites generally defended Trump’s conduct. So did Republican voters. But polls showed some wariness about Trump’s actions toward Ukraine among a sizable bloc of GOP voters (about a fourth in some polls). That Trump skeptic, however, wasn’t really represented on Fox News or Capitol Hill. So Republican politicians and Trump are probably driving polarization but also responding to GOP voters, who choose Trump over more than a dozen more traditional candidates in 2016 and still strongly approve of him now.
Post-impeachment, we are left with a lot of unknowns that were unimaginable five years ago. Will the American president allow a truly free and fair election? Has he created a precedent where future presidents will use government power to investigate their political rivals? If he wins a second term, what other democratic norms and values will he flout?
CORRECTION (Feb. 6, 2020, 10:16 a.m.): An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Andrew Johnson did not run for president after his impeachment in 1868. In fact, after serving out the remainder of Abraham Lincoln’s term, Johnson briefly sought the Democratic nomination in 1868 but was not a general election candidate.


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-07--You’ll Never Know Which Candidate Is Electable

In a beige reception hall in a Des Moines suburb , over paper plates piled with the remains of a Monday morning continental breakfast , Sen. Bernie Sanders urged a packed house of Iowans to manifest their dreams .
Imagine an America where cancer only kills you , rather than also rifling through your wallet .
Visualize a future where no American child has to pay off her grandmother ’ s student loans .
Cynicism is high and more than a quarter of us believe the American Dream is unattainable , but Sanders ’ s stump speech offered hope .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s not , ” he said .
The crowd went wild .
This speech was about issues but it was also a pitch for the semi-improbable Sanders campaign , itself .
Before you stands a 78-year-old Jewish man , a self-described democratic socialist and an independent interloper in the Democratic Party , who is making his second try at the presidency after 30 years as a professional gadfly .
Yet here we are , five weeks later , and that same old People ’ s Grandpa is the candidate most likely to win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ primary .
Everything is impossible , after all , until it ’ s not .
But the pundits say Sanders is risky , and the pundits are honorable men .
Already , you can find headlines full of concern that even if he was viable in Iowa , Sanders won ’ t be able to win when it really counts .
In other words : Sanders isn ’ t electable .
This whole concept of electability is frustrating to voters like Brooks Vander Kopsa of Granger , Iowa .
Standing in the back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who is and isn ’ t electable makes no sense to him — but he ’ s not even sure it matters .
“ There ’ s all this talk about electability .
‘ Oh , this person is so much more electable than that person.
’ But when I look at policy and I look at track record , I don ’ t know who is more electable than Bernie , ” he said .
“ So , electability .
I guess I don ’ t know what that is.
” Truth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the hands we ’ ve wrung dry over it in recent elections , electability isn ’ t a thing you can measure .
It ’ s subjective , not objective — which is why Sanders isn ’ t the only candidate whose persona can be twisted one way to fit a narrative of unelectability , and another to tell a story of certain success .
( Sen. Elizabeth Warren can attest to that . )
Political scientists study electability , but electability ain ’ t no science .
Instead , researchers say , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ex post facto rationalization that we slather over a stack of psychological biases , media influence and self-fulfilling poll prophecies .
It ’ s not bullshit , exactly ; some people really are more likely to be elected than others .
But the reasons behind it , and the ability to make assumptions based on it , well … “ [ Electability ] is this vague , floppy concept , ” said Nichole Bauer , a professor of political communication at Louisiana State University .
“ We don ’ t know who is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m not sure I ’ m who you want to talk to , ” said Julie Brown of West Des Moines , arching her eyebrows and flashing the Elizabeth Warren button hidden under the flap of her canvas purse .
She came to the Sanders rally with her teenage daughter , curious to understand why he was polling better than her favored candidate .
As Sanders proxies worked the crowd , we huddled against a wall , talking about the ways electability and psychological biases overlap .
“ I think he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” she said .
“ It frustrates the female inside me .
If Elizabeth Warren had had a heart attack , they would have put her six feet under.
” Determining who is electable inevitably pits candidates against each other , especially in an election year when the top priority for primary voters — by a long shot — is nominating someone who can take down the sitting president .
Brown is a voter who sees “ electability ” as basically a reflection of whether a candidate can clear the hurdles presented by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of talking about the primary — and wondering whether candidates will eventually win the general election — has made electability a hot buzzword of the 2020 election .
But , scientists say , we ’ ve not put as much work into clearly establishing what it is .
When physicists suspect a thing exists , but can ’ t observe it directly , they start studying the stuff around it .
You can ’ t see the particles , you can ’ t look at the black hole , but you can see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ else .
And that ’ s basically what political scientists have ended up doing with electability .
To understand it better , researchers have looked at a couple of different kinds of social collisions : What voters like in a politician , and what those voters think other people like .
And , in that way , Julie Brown isn ’ t wrong about electability and bias , Bauer told me .
Social scientists do use voters ’ biases to understand what electability is and what it might look like .
A lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contrived situations where researchers present participants with information about hypothetical candidates and ask them questions about how likeable that imaginary person is , or how much leadership ability they assume the candidate would possess .
It ’ s not the real world , but it does tell us something .
Specifically , Bauer told me , voters ’ conception of who can get elected appears to be based on who has been elected in the past .
“ And we always think about men , ” Bauer said .
For example , men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — and there ’ s a lot of research suggesting that people are more willing to vote for somebody whose voice pitch is more , well , manly .
In a 2016 paper , researchers made recordings of five men and five women speaking the same sentence : “ I urge you to vote for me this November.
” They played these recordings for 393 men and 411 women , all of whom were participants in the Cooperative Congressional Election Study — a nationally representative survey that ’ s used to track all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Participants were randomly assigned to listen to either five pairs of male voices or five pairs of female voices , and were asked which of each pair they ’ d prefer to vote for .
Across the board , participants preferred to vote for the candidate with the lower-pitched voice , regardless of if that candidate was male or female .
And the effect was clearer for participants over 40 — you know , the people most likely to turn out to vote .
But it ’ s not like someone ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually governing .
The people who did this study of voice pitch later went back and analyzed whether the voice pitch of sitting members of Congress correlated with their legislative activity , the holding of leadership positions or their influence in setting legislative priorities .
Lo and behold , having a deeper voice does not make you a better politician .
Voters just apparently sorta think it does .
Studies like this run somewhat counter to actual electoral outcomes , though , said Cindy Kam , professor of political science at Vanderbilt University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hold female candidates to higher standards than their male counterparts — women who get elected to public office tend to be more qualified for the jobs they hold than men who get elected , for example .
And women are significantly underrepresented in public office .
But that ’ s not the whole story because , while biases exist , women who do run seem to do about as well as men when it comes to getting elected .
Racial bias , on the other hand , more clearly factors into outcomes of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other experts said .
Studies have found that white voters see black and Latino candidates as more ideologically extreme and less competent .
There ’ s also evidence white voters resist coming out to vote for black candidates even when they share an ideology with that candidate .
And black women still rely on the black electorate to win their races .
Even Barack Obama , who won the presidency , probably didn ’ t get the votes a similarly positioned white candidate would have .
In their 2012 book “ The End @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kinder and Allison Dale-Riddle analyzed voter data from the 2008 presidential election .
Based on party identification , you ’ d have expected any candidate put forth by the Democratic party that year to pull in 55.5 percent of white voters .
Instead , Obama got 43.3 percent of the white vote .
He won the presidency , but with lower enthusiasm and turnout among whites than a similar white candidate would likely have had , Kam said .
So it ’ s fair to say that our notion of electability is , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ individual knee-jerk social biases — things like the color of a person ’ s skin , or the way they present their gender to the world .
We take those ingredients and we make assumptions about that person .
We make assumptions about what other people might think about that person .
We make assumptions about what researchers want us to say when they ask about our biases .
We make a stew — reactions and reactions to reactions .
It ’ s virtually impossible to avoid bias in perceptions of electability , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ science at Emory University .
“ Just about anything that affects how you feel about a candidate could affect assessment of electability , ” he said .
Media narratives , in turn , often prey on these biases , which only makes them stronger .
In lifting up electability as a marker of fitness , we ’ ve inadvertently created a system that caters to whatever our imagined lowest common denominator might be .
You might want to vote for a black , female candidate , goes the narrative … but other voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t .
Because , of course , electability isn ’ t just about individual feelings .
When voters like Julie Brown and Brooks Vander Kopsa talk about whether Bernie Sanders is electable , they aren ’ t really talking about their own feelings .
They ’ re talking about what they think other people feel , which is where polls come in .
“ The average person knows a little about politics , but not a ton , ” Stephen Utych , a professor of political science at Boise State University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a source of information to fill in the gaps .
“ If I ’ m a Republican and other Republicans don ’ t like this person , I don ’ t know what it is , but there must be something wrong with them , ” Utych said .
We American voters really like to believe we ’ re independent , Kam agreed , but the reality is that we take a lot of cues from the herd .
But polls can become a bit of an ouroboros .
Kam and Utych @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who were behind in the polls were rated less favorably by voters — and voters were less interested in seeking out information about those candidates .
The interaction of polls and media becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy , Abramowitz and Utych both said .
And candidates can shift the perception of how electable they are by striking back at the media and crafting their own narratives .
In a 2018 study , the share of voters who , after reading a candidate ’ s defense of their own electability , were willing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than doubled , rising from 15 percent to nearly 34 percent .
This early in the election season , there ’ s still an opportunity to change the narrative – to grasp electability out of the jaws of defeat .
And that ’ s the paradox that leads candidates like Sanders to spend months traversing the early primary states – breakfast to breakfast , handshake to handshake .
Winning Iowa allowed Barack Obama to craft a narrative of electability around himself in 2008 .
Conversely , Bill Clinton lost Iowa and took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But , from that , his campaign was able to spin a narrative of being the “ comeback kid ” , said Seth McKee , a professor of political science at Texas Tech University .
“ I think Iowa and New Hampshire matter so much in how the media portray the horse race after the votes have been cast , ” he told me .
But building those narratives and harnessing those horses are dependent on the idea that voters have a good idea of what other voters want , or what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be .
And the psychology gets very tricky here .
Frankly , experts said , voters aren ’ t great at knowing what ’ s going on in their own heads , let alone those of strangers .
A June 2019 Ipsos poll , for example , found that 74 percent of Democrats and Independents said they ’ d be comfortable voting for a female president , but only 33 percent of those same people believed their neighbors would be as open-minded .
The effect captured in that Ipsos poll is so common @ @ @ @ @ @ @ research to make sure participants aren ’ t just blowing some woke-sounding smoke .
“ People aren ’ t stupid , ” Bauer told me .
If you just ask who they like as a candidate , they ’ ll figure out that you ’ re trying to see if they ’ re sexist .
“ But asking if you think they ’ ll win is asking if you think other people will vote for that candidate .
It takes social desirability pressure off the individual.
” But when polls turn up results @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats are secretly more sexist than they let on ?
Are they showing Democrats are unfairly contemptuous of their fellow Americans ?
Maybe a little of both ?
It ’ s hard to say , but it does demonstrate how hard it is to predict electability based on what you think other people think .
Then there ’ s the issue that electability is not a fixed idea .
What makes a candidate likable to the nation , as a whole , is in flux — tracking , experts say , with hardening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , too .
James Muhammad , a Californian visiting Iowa , was one of the other people I spoke to at the Sanders rally .
When I asked him about electability , he just laughed .
“ Was Trump electable ?
” he said .
That ’ s a question academics are also asking .
And it ’ s one that ’ s deeply tied up in attempts to understand what electability looks like to Democrats now .
From what we can see in research on congressional races , which are more numerous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that is shifting .
Something fundamental .
“ I think there is an idea in the media of a centrist , usually white , not necessarily college educated voter who is the one at play and that probably has influenced the way the media is covering it , ” said Joshua Darr , a FiveThirtyEight contributor and professor of political science at Louisiana State University .
That assumption of the power of the centrist voter is , to some extent , evidence based .
Historically , being moderate and appealing to centrist voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elections , Utych and Abramowitz both told me .
But that ’ s been changing .
Abramowitz ’ s analysis of the 2018 House elections turned up evidence that an incumbent candidate ’ s past voting record — whether they were more moderate or not — didn ’ t really make much of a difference in whether they won or lost , regardless of party .
What ’ s more , he told me , the number of moderate members in Congress has been falling for decades .
Forty-eight percent of the 95th @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moderate range of ideology , compared to just 16 percent of the 115th Congress ( 2017-19 ) , Abramowitz found .
Ideologues are elected more often than they used to be .
Outsiders are elected more often , too .
And the percentage of true swing voters is shrinking , Utych said .
So does that mean someone like Sanders is more electable and someone like former Vice President Joe Biden is less electable ?
Electability here becomes a game of divining which group is more important to winning — swing voters or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s no more accurate than trying to estimate how sexist your neighbors are .
“ Which segment is bigger … there ’ s not great information on that , ” Utych said .
“ Anything you say is just guessing.
” Even attempts to pin electability down subjectively leave you chasing your own tail , said Elizabeth Simas , a professor of political science at the University of Houston .
We know from decades of research that voters have a tendency to line up their assumptions about who is electable line with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Maybe that means people just want to maintain some kind of cognitive consistency .
“ But it ’ s just always going to be impossible to parse out whether someone supports a candidate because of electability , or if a candidate is perceived as electable because they are the preferred candidate , ” Simas said .
And there ’ s no better place to see that ambiguity than at a primary campaign rally .
Skirting the edges of a cheering crowd , Brown and Vander Kopsa basically both want the same things — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a candidate who will be a game-changer and think outside the box .
They both suspect other voters aren ’ t engaged or doing the research necessary to know who meets those criteria .
What they don ’ t agree on is whether Bernie Sanders is inside the box , or out of it .

In a beige reception hall in a Des Moines suburb, over paper plates piled with the remains of a Monday morning continental breakfast, Sen. Bernie Sanders urged a packed house of Iowans to manifest their dreams. Imagine an America where cancer only kills you, rather than also rifling through your wallet. Visualize a future where no American child has to pay off her grandmother’s student loans. Cynicism is high and more than a quarter of us believe the American Dream is unattainable, but Sanders’s stump speech offered hope. “Everything is impossible until it’s not,” he said. The crowd went wild.
This speech was about issues but it was also a pitch for the semi-improbable Sanders campaign, itself. Before you stands a 78-year-old Jewish man, a self-described democratic socialist and an independent interloper in the Democratic Party, who is making his second try at the presidency after 30 years as a professional gadfly.
Yet here we are, five weeks later, and that same old People’s Grandpa is the candidate most likely to win a majority of delegates in the Democratic primary. Everything is impossible, after all, until it’s not. But the pundits say Sanders is risky, and the pundits are honorable men. Already, you can find headlines full of concern that even if he was viable in Iowa, Sanders won’t be able to win when it really counts. In other words: Sanders isn’t electable.
This whole concept of electability is frustrating to voters like Brooks Vander Kopsa of Granger, Iowa. Standing in the back of the crowd, he told me who is and isn’t electable makes no sense to him — but he’s not even sure it matters. “There’s all this talk about electability. ‘Oh, this person is so much more electable than that person.’ But when I look at policy and I look at track record, I don’t know who is more electable than Bernie,” he said. “So, electability. I guess I don’t know what that is.”
Truth is, nobody does. For all the hands we’ve wrung dry over it in recent elections, electability isn’t a thing you can measure. It’s subjective, not objective — which is why Sanders isn’t the only candidate whose persona can be twisted one way to fit a narrative of unelectability, and another to tell a story of certain success. (Sen. Elizabeth Warren can attest to that.)
Political scientists study electability, but electability ain’t no science. Instead, researchers say, it’s basically a layer of ex post facto rationalization that we slather over a stack of psychological biases, media influence and self-fulfilling poll prophecies. It’s not bullshit, exactly; some people really are more likely to be elected than others. But the reasons behind it, and the ability to make assumptions based on it, well …
“[Electability] is this vague, floppy concept,” said Nichole Bauer, a professor of political communication at Louisiana State University. “We don’t know who is electable until someone is elected.”
“I’m not sure I’m who you want to talk to,” said Julie Brown of West Des Moines, arching her eyebrows and flashing the Elizabeth Warren button hidden under the flap of her canvas purse. She came to the Sanders rally with her teenage daughter, curious to understand why he was polling better than her favored candidate. As Sanders proxies worked the crowd, we huddled against a wall, talking about the ways electability and psychological biases overlap. “I think he is electable and that frustrates me,” she said. “It frustrates the female inside me. If Elizabeth Warren had had a heart attack, they would have put her six feet under.”
Determining who is electable inevitably pits candidates against each other, especially in an election year when the top priority for primary voters — by a long shot — is nominating someone who can take down the sitting president. Brown is a voter who sees “electability” as basically a reflection of whether a candidate can clear the hurdles presented by the electorate’s prejudices.
Months of talking about the primary — and wondering whether candidates will eventually win the general election — has made electability a hot buzzword of the 2020 election. But, scientists say, we’ve not put as much work into clearly establishing what it is.
When physicists suspect a thing exists, but can’t observe it directly, they start studying the stuff around it. You can’t see the particles, you can’t look at the black hole, but you can see what happens when they crash into something else. And that’s basically what political scientists have ended up doing with electability. To understand it better, researchers have looked at a couple of different kinds of social collisions: What voters like in a politician, and what those voters think other people like.
And, in that way, Julie Brown isn’t wrong about electability and bias, Bauer told me. Social scientists do use voters’ biases to understand what electability is and what it might look like.
A lot of this comes from experimental studies — contrived situations where researchers present participants with information about hypothetical candidates and ask them questions about how likeable that imaginary person is, or how much leadership ability they assume the candidate would possess. It’s not the real world, but it does tell us something. Specifically, Bauer told me, voters’ conception of who can get elected appears to be based on who has been elected in the past. “And we always think about men,” Bauer said.
For example, men generally have lower pitched voices than women — and there’s a lot of research suggesting that people are more willing to vote for somebody whose voice pitch is more, well, manly. In a 2016 paper, researchers made recordings of five men and five women speaking the same sentence: “I urge you to vote for me this November.” They played these recordings for 393 men and 411 women, all of whom were participants in the Cooperative Congressional Election Study — a nationally representative survey that’s used to track all kinds of voter behavior and opinions.
Participants were randomly assigned to listen to either five pairs of male voices or five pairs of female voices, and were asked which of each pair they’d prefer to vote for. Across the board, participants preferred to vote for the candidate with the lower-pitched voice, regardless of if that candidate was male or female. And the effect was clearer for participants over 40 — you know, the people most likely to turn out to vote.
But it’s not like someone’s voice means much when it comes to actually governing. The people who did this study of voice pitch later went back and analyzed whether the voice pitch of sitting members of Congress correlated with their legislative activity, the holding of leadership positions or their influence in setting legislative priorities. Lo and behold, having a deeper voice does not make you a better politician. Voters just apparently sorta think it does.
Studies like this run somewhat counter to actual electoral outcomes, though, said Cindy Kam, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. Yes, studies suggest that voters hold female candidates to higher standards than their male counterparts — women who get elected to public office tend to be more qualified for the jobs they hold than men who get elected, for example. And women are significantly underrepresented in public office. But that’s not the whole story because, while biases exist, women who do run seem to do about as well as men when it comes to getting elected.
Racial bias, on the other hand, more clearly factors into outcomes of who actually wins elections, Kam and other experts said. Studies have found that white voters see black and Latino candidates as more ideologically extreme and less competent. There’s also evidence white voters resist coming out to vote for black candidates even when they share an ideology with that candidate. And black women still rely on the black electorate to win their races.
Even Barack Obama, who won the presidency, probably didn’t get the votes a similarly positioned white candidate would have. In their 2012 book “The End of Race?” political scientists Donald Kinder and Allison Dale-Riddle analyzed voter data from the 2008 presidential election. Based on party identification, you’d have expected any candidate put forth by the Democratic party that year to pull in 55.5 percent of white voters. Instead, Obama got 43.3 percent of the white vote. He won the presidency, but with lower enthusiasm and turnout among whites than a similar white candidate would likely have had, Kam said.
So it’s fair to say that our notion of electability is, at some level, related to our individual knee-jerk social biases — things like the color of a person’s skin, or the way they present their gender to the world. We take those ingredients and we make assumptions about that person. We make assumptions about what other people might think about that person. We make assumptions about what researchers want us to say when they ask about our biases. We make a stew — reactions and reactions to reactions. It’s virtually impossible to avoid bias in perceptions of electability, said Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University. “Just about anything that affects how you feel about a candidate could affect assessment of electability,” he said.
Media narratives, in turn, often prey on these biases, which only makes them stronger. In lifting up electability as a marker of fitness, we’ve inadvertently created a system that caters to whatever our imagined lowest common denominator might be. You might want to vote for a black, female candidate, goes the narrative … but other voters are racist and sexist and so you can’t.
Because, of course, electability isn’t just about individual feelings.
When voters like Julie Brown and Brooks Vander Kopsa talk about whether Bernie Sanders is electable, they aren’t really talking about their own feelings. They’re talking about what they think other people feel, which is where polls come in.
“The average person knows a little about politics, but not a ton,” Stephen Utych, a professor of political science at Boise State University, said. And voters use polls as a source of information to fill in the gaps. “If I’m a Republican and other Republicans don’t like this person, I don’t know what it is, but there must be something wrong with them,” Utych said. We American voters really like to believe we’re independent, Kam agreed, but the reality is that we take a lot of cues from the herd.
But polls can become a bit of an ouroboros. Kam and Utych’s 2014 study found that candidates who were behind in the polls were rated less favorably by voters — and voters were less interested in seeking out information about those candidates.
The interaction of polls and media becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy, Abramowitz and Utych both said. And candidates can shift the perception of how electable they are by striking back at the media and crafting their own narratives. In a 2018 study, the share of voters who, after reading a candidate’s defense of their own electability, were willing to think the candidate could win the election more than doubled, rising from 15 percent to nearly 34 percent.
This early in the election season, there’s still an opportunity to change the narrative – to grasp electability out of the jaws of defeat. And that’s the paradox that leads candidates like Sanders to spend months traversing the early primary states – breakfast to breakfast, handshake to handshake. Winning Iowa allowed Barack Obama to craft a narrative of electability around himself in 2008. Conversely, Bill Clinton lost Iowa and took second place in New Hampshire in 1992. But, from that, his campaign was able to spin a narrative of being the “comeback kid”, said Seth McKee, a professor of political science at Texas Tech University. “I think Iowa and New Hampshire matter so much in how the media portray the horse race after the votes have been cast,” he told me.
But building those narratives and harnessing those horses are dependent on the idea that voters have a good idea of what other voters want, or what other people’s deal breakers might be. And the psychology gets very tricky here. Frankly, experts said, voters aren’t great at knowing what’s going on in their own heads, let alone those of strangers.
A June 2019 Ipsos poll, for example, found that 74 percent of Democrats and Independents said they’d be comfortable voting for a female president, but only 33 percent of those same people believed their neighbors would be as open-minded.
The effect captured in that Ipsos poll is so common, social scientists use it in their research to make sure participants aren’t just blowing some woke-sounding smoke. “People aren’t stupid,” Bauer told me. If you just ask who they like as a candidate, they’ll figure out that you’re trying to see if they’re sexist. “But asking if you think they’ll win is asking if you think other people will vote for that candidate. It takes social desirability pressure off the individual.” But when polls turn up results like that, are they showing that Democrats are secretly more sexist than they let on? Are they showing Democrats are unfairly contemptuous of their fellow Americans? Maybe a little of both? It’s hard to say, but it does demonstrate how hard it is to predict electability based on what you think other people think.
Then there’s the issue that electability is not a fixed idea. What makes a candidate likable to the nation, as a whole, is in flux — tracking, experts say, with hardening partisan lines.
And voters see it, too. James Muhammad, a Californian visiting Iowa, was one of the other people I spoke to at the Sanders rally. When I asked him about electability, he just laughed. “Was Trump electable?” he said.
That’s a question academics are also asking. And it’s one that’s deeply tied up in attempts to understand what electability looks like to Democrats now. From what we can see in research on congressional races, which are more numerous, there’s something about electability that is shifting. Something fundamental.
“I think there is an idea in the media of a centrist, usually white, not necessarily college educated voter who is the one at play and that probably has influenced the way the media is covering it,” said Joshua Darr, a FiveThirtyEight contributor and professor of political science at Louisiana State University. That assumption of the power of the centrist voter is, to some extent, evidence based. Historically, being moderate and appealing to centrist voters was a great way to win congressional elections, Utych and Abramowitz both told me. But that’s been changing. Abramowitz’s analysis of the 2018 House elections turned up evidence that an incumbent candidate’s past voting record — whether they were more moderate or not — didn’t really make much of a difference in whether they won or lost, regardless of party. What’s more, he told me, the number of moderate members in Congress has been falling for decades. Forty-eight percent of the 95th Congress (1977-79) fell within the moderate range of ideology, compared to just 16 percent of the 115th Congress (2017-19), Abramowitz found.
Ideologues are elected more often than they used to be. Outsiders are elected more often, too. And the percentage of true swing voters is shrinking, Utych said. So does that mean someone like Sanders is more electable and someone like former Vice President Joe Biden is less electable? Electability here becomes a game of divining which group is more important to winning — swing voters or the partisan base. But that’s no more accurate than trying to estimate how sexist your neighbors are. “Which segment is bigger … there’s not great information on that,” Utych said. “Anything you say is just guessing.”
Even attempts to pin electability down subjectively leave you chasing your own tail, said Elizabeth Simas, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. We know from decades of research that voters have a tendency to line up their assumptions about who is electable line with the person they want to be elected. Maybe that means people just want to maintain some kind of cognitive consistency. “But it’s just always going to be impossible to parse out whether someone supports a candidate because of electability, or if a candidate is perceived as electable because they are the preferred candidate,” Simas said.
And there’s no better place to see that ambiguity than at a primary campaign rally. Skirting the edges of a cheering crowd, Brown and Vander Kopsa basically both want the same things — a candidate who cares about average people, a candidate who will be a game-changer and think outside the box. They both suspect other voters aren’t engaged or doing the research necessary to know who meets those criteria. What they don’t agree on is whether Bernie Sanders is inside the box, or out of it.