vox--2020-02-11--The surprising strategy behind the Gates Foundation’s success

Over the first 20 years of its existence , the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spent $ 53.8 billion on its various programs , the Gateses announced in their annual letter for 2020 .
The large majority of that spending , about $ 39.8 billion , went to global development and global health programs .
This is an impressive sum , one that solidifies the foundation as by far the most prolific giver in all of American philanthropy .
In 2015 , for instance , it distributed $ 3.8 billion when no other foundation even crossed the $ 1 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the scale of its giving .
But the 2020 annual letter doesn ’ t just rattle off statistics .
It delves into the strategy behind their giving , which is important for understanding everything the Gateses have done to this point .
“ When [ Warren Buffett ] donated the bulk of his fortune to our foundation and joined us as a partner in its work , he urged us to ‘ swing for the fences , ’ ” the Gateses write , with Bill adding in the margins , “ You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s got me using a sports metaphor.
” What the Gateses took that to mean was that they should look for opportunities of high leverage , where a smaller investment can lead to a much bigger payoff .
“ The goal isn ’ t just incremental progress , ” they write .
“ It ’ s to put the full force of our efforts and resources behind the big bets that , if successful , will save and improve lives.
” It ’ s an approach that has had a consequential impact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ model for other foundations and donors who want to give effectively .
The Gates Foundation ’ s giving is enormous — but it still pales in comparison to what governments spend on similar programming .
For instance , the United States funds about $ 11 billion a year in global health programs , whereas the Gateses have , by their own numbers , averaged $ 780 million a year on global health .
But there ’ s more to dig into here .
The Gateses ’ 20th anniversary letter is unusually clear in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and their foundation ’ s success is not built on direct provision of services , or using their money to directly fund , say , vaccine distribution .
Their success is , instead , built on leverage : specifically , the ability of the Gateses with their smaller but more flexibly deployable pot of money to forge coalitions with large international organizations and governments that can in turn mobilize many more billions of dollars than the Gates Foundation can alone .
The letter begins with the Gates Foundation ’ s role in creating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ specializes in providing vaccines in poor countries .
They provided $ 750 million in seed funding , and about $ 4 billion in funds overall .
A World Health Organization report estimated that between 2000 and 2013 , Gavi provided 440 million immunizations and averted 6 million deaths .
That ’ s more immunizations than $ 4 billion on its own could buy — indeed Gavi ’ s total budget to date is more like $ 18 billion .
The group only got off the ground because the Gateses used their money to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ UNICEF , the World Health Organization , and others as allies , and to raise money directly from governments .
The US government , for instance , threw in another $ 2.2 billion on top of the Gateses ’ $ 4 billion : The formation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS , Tuberculosis , and Malaria is a similar story : the Gateses played a convening and angel-funding role in putting together an organization that would eventually subsist on funding from governments .
Here the total spending is even greater : the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in total funding for on-the-ground projects by summer 2019 , of which $ 18 billion came from the US government and less than $ 3 billion from the Gateses directly .
The Gateses recount a series of disappointing investments on HIV/AIDS that , tellingly , broke from this strategy of convening governments and leveraging their funds .
“ In the beginning , we put a lot of resources into HIV preventatives that needed to be taken every day .
For a lot of reasons , those didn ’ t turn out as we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Today we ’ re focused on longer-lasting preventatives .
Imagine if , instead of having to take a pill every day , a person could get one injection every other month , an implant in his or her arm , or even a vaccine to entirely remove the risk of getting the virus.
” They don ’ t appear to be reassessing their approach of supplementing GAVI/Global Fund style collaborations with governments with direct scientific funding .
But the latter half of their strategy appears to have yielded fewer concrete wins .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years ago , we would have guessed that global health would be our foundation ’ s riskiest work , and our U.S. education work would be our surest bet , ” the Gateses write .
“ In fact , it has turned out just the opposite.
” This is true in terms of actual humanitarian outcomes , but I think it undersells how extraordinary the policy changes on education secured by the foundation have been .
It ’ s just that those changes haven ’ t had much of an on-the-ground impact .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ every year on K-12 education .
The Gateses ’ entire US program agenda , including education and everything else they invested in , cost $ 8.6 billion over the last 20 years .
But they had a profound impact all the same .
“ We bet big on a set of standards called the Common Core , ” Bill Gates writes in the new letter .
“ Nearly every state adopted them within two years of their release.
” Now , I don ’ t think the evidence supports the view that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good — and they themselves concede that the Common Core rollout was somewhat bungled .
But it is nonetheless an example where a dollar went so much further than what that dollar could directly buy .
” We thought that if states raised the standards the market would respond and develop new instructional materials that aligned with those standards .
That didn ’ t happen , so we looked for ways to encourage the market , ” Bill continues .
He suggests that by backing “ a nonprofit organization called EdReports , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ materials , ” they can get around this concern .
That hardly seems adequate , but at least it ’ s something .
The Gateses do show some humility about their track record .
“ We certainly understand why many people are skeptical about the idea of billionaire philanthropists designing classroom innovations or setting education policy , ” they write .
“ Frankly , we are , too.
” But that hesitancy doesn ’ t stop them from laying out an ambitious agenda for the next few years or decades .
That agenda @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like the Gates Millennium Scholars Program , which offers full rides to college for minority students .
But they also highlight Networks for School Improvement : “ Each network includes eight to 20 schools and is focused on a goal of its choosing—for example , helping freshmen who aren ’ t ‘ on track ’ to graduate get themselves on the right path.
” This , again , finds the foundation using a relatively modest investment ( $ 240 million so far , a small fraction of K-12 spending ) to change approaches @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so that the foundation ’ s investment has an outsized impact by leveraging the power of government .
The letter notes that the Gateses want to expand their focus from global health/development and education and take on two big new categories : climate change and gender equality .
Here too they take a leveraged approach .
The most specific climate program they name is the Global Commission on Adaptation , a panel that Bill Gates co-chaired that aims to influence government climate adaptation policy .
They also highlight their Gavi and Global Fund @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We need to be thinking about the indirect effects , too , like how a warmer planet will affect global health.
” On gender , Melinda Gates emphasizes expanding access to family planning : “ There are over 200 million women in developing countries who do not want to get pregnant but are not using modern contraceptives.
” ( The Gates Foundation has been vocal about wanting to support family planning , while acknowledging the brutal history of population control efforts by US foundations . )
Though she does not make this link @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a core competency of the Gates Foundation : its ability to put together consortiums of foundations and governments to buy necessary medications in bulk and distribute them to poor countries .
If there ’ s one big meta lesson to learn from this track record , it ’ s that effective foundations — that is , foundations that achieve what they set out to achieve , whether or not you think that ’ s good for the world — work by leveraging more powerful actors with more resources than themselves .
Those actors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; they might be corporations too .
Bill and Melinda Gates didn ’ t become the most important philanthropists of their generation simply because they have a ton of money .
They became important philanthropists by being clever about turning their money into even more money .
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter and we ’ ll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world ’ s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good .
Future Perfect is funded in part by individual contributions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more here .

Over the first 20 years of its existence, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spent $53.8 billion on its various programs, the Gateses announced in their annual letter for 2020. The large majority of that spending, about $39.8 billion, went to global development and global health programs.
This is an impressive sum, one that solidifies the foundation as by far the most prolific giver in all of American philanthropy. In 2015, for instance, it distributed $3.8 billion when no other foundation even crossed the $1 billion threshold. It is truly without peers in the scale of its giving.
But the 2020 annual letter doesn’t just rattle off statistics. It delves into the strategy behind their giving, which is important for understanding everything the Gateses have done to this point. “When [Warren Buffett] donated the bulk of his fortune to our foundation and joined us as a partner in its work, he urged us to ‘swing for the fences,’” the Gateses write, with Bill adding in the margins, “You know Warren was onto something when he’s got me using a sports metaphor.”
What the Gateses took that to mean was that they should look for opportunities of high leverage, where a smaller investment can lead to a much bigger payoff. “The goal isn’t just incremental progress,” they write. “It’s to put the full force of our efforts and resources behind the big bets that, if successful, will save and improve lives.”
It’s an approach that has had a consequential impact — and that should serve as a model for other foundations and donors who want to give effectively.
Leveraging government spending in global health
The Gates Foundation’s giving is enormous — but it still pales in comparison to what governments spend on similar programming. For instance, the United States funds about $11 billion a year in global health programs, whereas the Gateses have, by their own numbers, averaged $780 million a year on global health.
But there’s more to dig into here. The Gateses’ 20th anniversary letter is unusually clear in making the point that the couples’ and their foundation’s success is not built on direct provision of services, or using their money to directly fund, say, vaccine distribution.
Their success is, instead, built on leverage: specifically, the ability of the Gateses with their smaller but more flexibly deployable pot of money to forge coalitions with large international organizations and governments that can in turn mobilize many more billions of dollars than the Gates Foundation can alone.
The letter begins with the Gates Foundation’s role in creating Gavi in 2000, a nonprofit that specializes in providing vaccines in poor countries. They provided $750 million in seed funding, and about $4 billion in funds overall. A World Health Organization report estimated that between 2000 and 2013, Gavi provided 440 million immunizations and averted 6 million deaths.
That’s more immunizations than $4 billion on its own could buy — indeed Gavi’s total budget to date is more like $18 billion. The group only got off the ground because the Gateses used their money to help loop in the World Bank, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and others as allies, and to raise money directly from governments. The US government, for instance, threw in another $2.2 billion on top of the Gateses’ $4 billion:
The formation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is a similar story: the Gateses played a convening and angel-funding role in putting together an organization that would eventually subsist on funding from governments. Here the total spending is even greater: the Global Fund had approved $49 billion in total funding for on-the-ground projects by summer 2019, of which $18 billion came from the US government and less than $3 billion from the Gateses directly.
The Gateses recount a series of disappointing investments on HIV/AIDS that, tellingly, broke from this strategy of convening governments and leveraging their funds. “In the beginning, we put a lot of resources into HIV preventatives that needed to be taken every day. For a lot of reasons, those didn’t turn out as we hoped,” they write. “Today we’re focused on longer-lasting preventatives. Imagine if, instead of having to take a pill every day, a person could get one injection every other month, an implant in his or her arm, or even a vaccine to entirely remove the risk of getting the virus.”
They don’t appear to be reassessing their approach of supplementing GAVI/Global Fund style collaborations with governments with direct scientific funding. But the latter half of their strategy appears to have yielded fewer concrete wins.
The Gateses’ US programming
“If you’d asked us 20 years ago, we would have guessed that global health would be our foundation’s riskiest work, and our U.S. education work would be our surest bet,” the Gateses write. “In fact, it has turned out just the opposite.”
This is true in terms of actual humanitarian outcomes, but I think it undersells how extraordinary the policy changes on education secured by the foundation have been. It’s just that those changes haven’t had much of an on-the-ground impact.
The US spends about $700 billion every year on K-12 education. The Gateses’ entire US program agenda, including education and everything else they invested in, cost $8.6 billion over the last 20 years. But they had a profound impact all the same.
“We bet big on a set of standards called the Common Core,” Bill Gates writes in the new letter. “Nearly every state adopted them within two years of their release.”
Now, I don’t think the evidence supports the view that the Gateses’ educational investments have done much good — and they themselves concede that the Common Core rollout was somewhat bungled. But it is nonetheless an example where a dollar went so much further than what that dollar could directly buy.
”We thought that if states raised the standards the market would respond and develop new instructional materials that aligned with those standards. That didn’t happen, so we looked for ways to encourage the market,” Bill continues. He suggests that by backing “a nonprofit organization called EdReports, which acts like a Consumer Reports for instructional materials,” they can get around this concern. That hardly seems adequate, but at least it’s something.
The Gateses do show some humility about their track record. “We certainly understand why many people are skeptical about the idea of billionaire philanthropists designing classroom innovations or setting education policy,” they write. “Frankly, we are, too.” But that hesitancy doesn’t stop them from laying out an ambitious agenda for the next few years or decades.
That agenda includes some unleveraged direct provision programs, like the Gates Millennium Scholars Program, which offers full rides to college for minority students. But they also highlight Networks for School Improvement: “Each network includes eight to 20 schools and is focused on a goal of its choosing—for example, helping freshmen who aren’t ‘on track’ to graduate get themselves on the right path.”
This, again, finds the foundation using a relatively modest investment ($240 million so far, a small fraction of K-12 spending) to change approaches in a large number of schools, so that the foundation’s investment has an outsized impact by leveraging the power of government.
Two big new priority areas
The letter notes that the Gateses want to expand their focus from global health/development and education and take on two big new categories: climate change and gender equality.
Here too they take a leveraged approach. The most specific climate program they name is the Global Commission on Adaptation, a panel that Bill Gates co-chaired that aims to influence government climate adaptation policy. They also highlight their Gavi and Global Fund investments again here, arguing, “We need to be thinking about the indirect effects, too, like how a warmer planet will affect global health.”
On gender, Melinda Gates emphasizes expanding access to family planning: “There are over 200 million women in developing countries who do not want to get pregnant but are not using modern contraceptives.” (The Gates Foundation has been vocal about wanting to support family planning, while acknowledging the brutal history of population control efforts by US foundations.)
Though she does not make this link explicitly, this is again building on a core competency of the Gates Foundation: its ability to put together consortiums of foundations and governments to buy necessary medications in bulk and distribute them to poor countries.
If there’s one big meta lesson to learn from this track record, it’s that effective foundations — that is, foundations that achieve what they set out to achieve, whether or not you think that’s good for the world — work by leveraging more powerful actors with more resources than themselves. Those actors will usually but not always be governments; they might be corporations too.
Bill and Melinda Gates didn’t become the most important philanthropists of their generation simply because they have a ton of money. They became important philanthropists by being clever about turning their money into even more money.
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter and we’ll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world’s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good.
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vox--2020-02-12--The gossip accounts telling you which TikTok star is dating which YouTuber

If you were following the almost definitely not legally binding wedding of YouTubers Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau last July , it is likely that you weren ’ t doing so through the mainstream press .
The nuptials — which seemed more about a shared love of money and attention than any actual romance — were tracked breathlessly on Instagram accounts like Here For The Tea and in YouTube videos with titles like “ Jake & Tana Wedding SCAM !
” or “ My Jake and Tana Wedding Experience ( FIST FIGHT ) .
” Paul and Mongeau got what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clout , relevance , and cash .
But it also provided months of continuous updates from the network of influencer drama Instagram accounts and YouTube channels dedicated to the byzantine relationships between people who live their lives for content .
Everybody won .
Call them gossip influencers : like celebrity journalists , but more fun , less burdened by reporting ethics , and busy chronicling people you ’ ve never heard of .
They ’ re an industry that extends far beyond the boundaries of any single platform : Over the past five @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , TikTok pages , and profitable media companies have been built around which YouTuber is dating which Twitch streamer , who ’ s breaking up with who , and who ’ s possibly getting cheated on .
This economy is growing , even when the people they ’ re obsessing over are known only to a small segment of the general population .
In a world where there are far too many famous people for traditional tabloids to keep track of and where content creators regularly build rabid online fanbases , gossip influencers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Accounts like TikTok Room , DramaAlert , and Comments By Celebs are partly journalistic endeavors and partly savvy brand building , and occupy a new media landscape where the line between reporting and influencing is barely there at all .
“ If you look throughout history , everything that we learn about in history class is drama , ” says Daniel Keem over a recent phone call .
“ We ’ re learning about wars , we ’ re learning about people fighting for civil rights .
Somebody feels betrayed , someone feels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s all really the same thing.
” For Keem , a.k.a .
Keemstar , a.k.a .
the infamous host of the 5.5 million-subscriber YouTube channel DramaAlert , antics like those of Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau pay his bills .
Since 2012 , Keem has tracked the interpersonal drama of popular streamers and vloggers and offered his own take on all of it .
Keem ’ s empire began when he was a professional gamer posting troll and prank content about Call of Duty and Halo .
It was a small and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ players bickered on Twitter , Keem would narrate alongside them — “ shoutcasting , ” as it ’ s known in esports — and eventually brought the schtick to YouTube .
It wasn ’ t until around 2015 , as the Call of Duty community was dying off , that Keem pivoted to covering the vloggers and topics that were populating YouTube ’ s trending tab — PewDiePie , FaZe Clan , and the ongoing saga of GamerGate — with the bravado and brashness of a radio host .
Vlogs about leaked nudes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the irony-tinged and often controversial channel — Keem has been the subject of ire not only from viewers but the YouTubers he covers , but his attitude toward his reputation is flippant : “ More promotion for me , ” he laughs .
By then , digital gossip accounts were starting to become a bigger part of the tabloid landscape , most prominently in the form of Instagram account The Shade Room in 2014 .
From the beginning , The Shade Room regularly beat traditional magazines to breaking black celebrity news stories @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would employ a team of seven and become the second-most popular publisher on Instagram , after Hong Kong-based meme channel 9GAG .
The ballooning economy of beauty YouTubers , too , began to have its own devoted drama pundits thanks to people like Sanders Kennedy , who ’ d post videos like “ THE TRUTH ABOUT BEAUTY GURUS EXPOSED , ” and “ WHY I ‘ HATE ’ JEFFREE STAR.
” Shane Dawson , now best known for his massively popular conspiracy theory videos , had pivoted from character sketches ( some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commentary about celebrity and influencer news .
Paying attention to the celebrities nobody else was is also how Famous Birthdays became one of the rare profitable media companies of the 2010s .
In 2012 , Evan Britton , its founder and CEO , set out to build a fast , mobile-first encyclopedia of celebrities , but within a year , noticed that people were using the page to find information on Vine stars — teenagers who weren ’ t famous enough for Wikipedia but popular on their own platform .
“ We grew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and if somebody has 800,000 followers , that ’ s 100,000 people who are passionate about them , ” Evan says .
Famous Birthdays , which doesn ’ t do marketing or public relations , has received no outside funding , profits only from programmatic ads , and now employs 40 people from its office in Los Angeles .
Because creator profiles on Famous Birthdays are publicly ranked by search interest and engagement ( 15-year-old TikToker Charli D ’ Amelio has remained comfortably at No .
1 for weeks ) , staffers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dating rumors or endorsement deals with creators themselves .
Visiting the Famous Birthdays office has become a rite of passage for Gen Z influencers : between five and eight of them stop by each day to shoot videos and pose in front of the branded wall .
D ’ Amelio is the undisputed queen of the kids who make up the social influencers du jour : TikTokers , who of course now have their very own gossip Instagram account .
In 2015 , two teenagers a half-country apart , Elasia and Nat , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that directed them to “ comment below and make friends !
” Soon , they were running their own page about drama that was happening on Musical.ly , which would eventually become TikTok .
At nearly 300,000 followers , @ TikTokRoom is now by far the biggest account devoted to TikTok drama , even as Elasia and Nat balance it with their full-time schoolwork .
Elasia , a 19-year-old college student in New Jersey , and Nat , a 17-year-old high school senior in Texas , update their followers about a dozen times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ video and what 15-year-old influencer and singer Danielle Cohn said on her Instagram Live feed .
“ I ’ m on it all the time , ” Elasia says .
“ We never miss anything.
” That there is this kind of audience demand for an Instagram account devoted to what teenage TikTokers comment on each others ’ posts won ’ t surprise anyone who ’ s been paying attention to the evolution of attention-paying .
As a recent New York Times headline put it , even “ nobodies ” have fans now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decades-old concept of parasocial relationships in a world where basically everyone has an online following .
Relatively niche podcasts like Who ?
Weekly , in which hosts Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber recount the week ’ s news in Z-list celebrities , have thriving communities of thousands of listeners who chat in Facebook groups and contribute on Patreon for access to VIP episodes .
BuzzFeed News now has its own dedicated influencer drama newsletter , Please Like Me .
At the same time , another celebrity watchdog Instagram account was building its own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the page with nearly 1.5 million followers that posts whenever Gwyneth Paltrow comments on John Mayer ’ s selfie or Natalie Portman attempts a viral meme , launched @ CommentsByTikTok in January .
While the main CBC page is mainly devoted to A- and B-list celebrities ’ Instagram commenting habits , it also has accounts that track the Bachelor universe , Bravolebrities , and professional athletes .
TikTok was a natural next step .
“ Once Charli and [ fellow TikToker Chase Hudson ] started officially dating , we looked at each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re going to be this obsessed , we at least need to turn it into a business , ’ ” explains 25-year-old founder Emma Diamond .
Diamond and co-founder Julie Kramer , 24 , say that posting about social influencers is entirely different than traditional celebrities .
Even though there may be relatively fewer people paying attention to Charli and Chase versus , say , Kim Kardashian , the ones who do are really paying attention .
“ If you ’ re a really big fan of David Dobrik and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have any other friends [ to talk about it with ] , it feels more special , ” Kramer explains .
Today , Comments By Celebs is able to support a full-time staff of three through advertisements on the account and on its bi-weekly podcast .
As a favorite among young Instagram users , they ’ re also flooded with summer intern requests ( “ It ’ s very flattering , ” Emma says ) .
Not all gossip influencers run quite such lucrative business models — YouTube is littered with tea channels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feuds like the James Charles and Tati Westbrook saga .
TikTok Room has only partnered with a handful of small brands to monetize the account and doesn ’ t make nearly enough money for Elasia and Nat to live on ; both have separate jobs .
As its name would suggest , though , TikTok Room has ambitions to become the next Shade Room : Elasia and Nat are both interested in pursuing marketing post-college and say they want to build the account into something much bigger .
Just as newspapers and traditional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — though anathema to respectable journalism , many tabloids continue to pay for stories — so too do gossip accounts .
“ We don ’ t post fake tea , ” Elasia stresses , though she says they made mistakes in the early days of the Musical.ly page , and has deleted posts in the past .
She says they blur out curse words , try to be as unbiased as possible , and never leak private messages or photos .
While The Shade Room airs celebrity laundry both dirty and clean , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tends to avoid any negativity whatsoever .
“ Our whole goal is that we would never want the person in the picture to look at it and be like , ‘ Wow , really sucks that they posted that , ’ ” Emma explains .
YouTube channels are often far more vicious .
As one anonymous beauty influencer told Cheryl Wischhover in a piece for Vox , “ I feel like there are channels who do their job well and then there are other channels that stretch the truth and reach for drama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can lead to false news , rumors , and hurtful words against influencers .
Some can even verge on bullying.
” Gossip accounts , most of which are run by people with no background in journalism , or in some cases no interest in it at all , are beholden to an ever-murky set of standards about what counts as fair game .
If an influencer hates what you post , but you know it ’ s true , do you delete it in the name of creating a positive community , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name of objective reporting ?
If you ’ re someone like Keemstar , who ’ s risen to the status of influencer himself , are people still supposed to take your opinion seriously ?
Ironically , the same debate is happening in journalism itself : When name-brand writers are known less for their work and mostly for their online presences , marketable personas can rise to the top , sometimes at the expense of quality or truthfulness .
Everyone in the business of news , then , whether it ’ s about politics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where they belong in a world where we are all , to some extent , influencers .
In the early days of the celebrity gossip internet , bloggers like Perez Hilton would pride themselves in their refusal to bend to celebrities ’ demands .
Now that everyone is jockeying for clout on the same platforms , positivity , not snark , is what sells .
The tone and quality of gossip accounts may not seem to matter much for those uninterested in their subjects , but as the space grows — and as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ famous people than ever in history , it will — traditional media will have to learn from it .
Conversely , gossip influencers may be the standard social news outlets of the future .
As Emma of Comments By Celeb says , “ I don ’ t want people to see us as just an Instagram account .
I want people to see us as a media company .
”

If you were following the almost definitely not legally binding wedding of YouTubers Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau last July, it is likely that you weren’t doing so through the mainstream press. The nuptials — which seemed more about a shared love of money and attention than any actual romance — were tracked breathlessly on Instagram accounts like Here For The Tea and in YouTube videos with titles like “Jake & Tana Wedding SCAM!” or “My Jake and Tana Wedding Experience (FIST FIGHT).”
Paul and Mongeau got what they wanted out of their marriage: clout, relevance, and cash. But it also provided months of continuous updates from the network of influencer drama Instagram accounts and YouTube channels dedicated to the byzantine relationships between people who live their lives for content. Everybody won.
Call them gossip influencers: like celebrity journalists, but more fun, less burdened by reporting ethics, and busy chronicling people you’ve never heard of. They’re an industry that extends far beyond the boundaries of any single platform: Over the past five years, Instagram accounts, Snap channels, TikTok pages, and profitable media companies have been built around which YouTuber is dating which Twitch streamer, who’s breaking up with who, and who’s possibly getting cheated on. This economy is growing, even when the people they’re obsessing over are known only to a small segment of the general population.
In a world where there are far too many famous people for traditional tabloids to keep track of and where content creators regularly build rabid online fanbases, gossip influencers have turned into an often-lucrative industry. Accounts like TikTok Room, DramaAlert, and Comments By Celebs are partly journalistic endeavors and partly savvy brand building, and occupy a new media landscape where the line between reporting and influencing is barely there at all.
“If you look throughout history, everything that we learn about in history class is drama,” says Daniel Keem over a recent phone call. “We’re learning about wars, we’re learning about people fighting for civil rights. Somebody feels betrayed, someone feels backstabbed, someone gets dumped. It’s all really the same thing.”
For Keem, a.k.a. Keemstar, a.k.a. the infamous host of the 5.5 million-subscriber YouTube channel DramaAlert, antics like those of Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau pay his bills. Since 2012, Keem has tracked the interpersonal drama of popular streamers and vloggers and offered his own take on all of it.
Keem’s empire began when he was a professional gamer posting troll and prank content about Call of Duty and Halo. It was a small and tight-knit community then, and when key players bickered on Twitter, Keem would narrate alongside them — “shoutcasting,” as it’s known in esports — and eventually brought the schtick to YouTube.
It wasn’t until around 2015, as the Call of Duty community was dying off, that Keem pivoted to covering the vloggers and topics that were populating YouTube’s trending tab — PewDiePie, FaZe Clan, and the ongoing saga of GamerGate — with the bravado and brashness of a radio host. Vlogs about leaked nudes and high-profile hacks were both fair game for the irony-tinged and often controversial channel — Keem has been the subject of ire not only from viewers but the YouTubers he covers, but his attitude toward his reputation is flippant: “More promotion for me,” he laughs.
By then, digital gossip accounts were starting to become a bigger part of the tabloid landscape, most prominently in the form of Instagram account The Shade Room in 2014. From the beginning, The Shade Room regularly beat traditional magazines to breaking black celebrity news stories, and within four years, it would employ a team of seven and become the second-most popular publisher on Instagram, after Hong Kong-based meme channel 9GAG.
The ballooning economy of beauty YouTubers, too, began to have its own devoted drama pundits thanks to people like Sanders Kennedy, who’d post videos like “THE TRUTH ABOUT BEAUTY GURUS EXPOSED,” and “WHY I ‘HATE’ JEFFREE STAR.” Shane Dawson, now best known for his massively popular conspiracy theory videos, had pivoted from character sketches (some of which included him wearing blackface) to commentary about celebrity and influencer news.
Paying attention to the celebrities nobody else was is also how Famous Birthdays became one of the rare profitable media companies of the 2010s. In 2012, Evan Britton, its founder and CEO, set out to build a fast, mobile-first encyclopedia of celebrities, but within a year, noticed that people were using the page to find information on Vine stars — teenagers who weren’t famous enough for Wikipedia but popular on their own platform.
“We grew because social media created so many celebrities, and if somebody has 800,000 followers, that’s 100,000 people who are passionate about them,” Evan says. Famous Birthdays, which doesn’t do marketing or public relations, has received no outside funding, profits only from programmatic ads, and now employs 40 people from its office in Los Angeles.
Because creator profiles on Famous Birthdays are publicly ranked by search interest and engagement (15-year-old TikToker Charli D’Amelio has remained comfortably at No. 1 for weeks), staffers are able to easily confirm facts like dating rumors or endorsement deals with creators themselves. Visiting the Famous Birthdays office has become a rite of passage for Gen Z influencers: between five and eight of them stop by each day to shoot videos and pose in front of the branded wall.
D’Amelio is the undisputed queen of the kids who make up the social influencers du jour: TikTokers, who of course now have their very own gossip Instagram account. In 2015, two teenagers a half-country apart, Elasia and Nat, met each other under an Instagram post that directed them to “comment below and make friends!” Soon, they were running their own page about drama that was happening on Musical.ly, which would eventually become TikTok.
At nearly 300,000 followers, @TikTokRoom is now by far the biggest account devoted to TikTok drama, even as Elasia and Nat balance it with their full-time schoolwork. Elasia, a 19-year-old college student in New Jersey, and Nat, a 17-year-old high school senior in Texas, update their followers about a dozen times a day about who commented on whose video and what 15-year-old influencer and singer Danielle Cohn said on her Instagram Live feed. “I’m on it all the time,” Elasia says. “We never miss anything.”
That there is this kind of audience demand for an Instagram account devoted to what teenage TikTokers comment on each others’ posts won’t surprise anyone who’s been paying attention to the evolution of attention-paying.
As a recent New York Times headline put it, even “nobodies” have fans now. Writer Jamie Lauren Keiles explores the decades-old concept of parasocial relationships in a world where basically everyone has an online following. Relatively niche podcasts like Who? Weekly, in which hosts Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber recount the week’s news in Z-list celebrities, have thriving communities of thousands of listeners who chat in Facebook groups and contribute on Patreon for access to VIP episodes. BuzzFeed News now has its own dedicated influencer drama newsletter, Please Like Me.
At the same time, another celebrity watchdog Instagram account was building its own dedicated TikTok space: Comments By Celebs, the page with nearly 1.5 million followers that posts whenever Gwyneth Paltrow comments on John Mayer’s selfie or Natalie Portman attempts a viral meme, launched @CommentsByTikTok in January. While the main CBC page is mainly devoted to A- and B-list celebrities’ Instagram commenting habits, it also has accounts that track the Bachelor universe, Bravolebrities, and professional athletes. TikTok was a natural next step.
“Once Charli and [fellow TikToker Chase Hudson] started officially dating, we looked at each other and were like, ‘If we’re going to be this obsessed, we at least need to turn it into a business,’” explains 25-year-old founder Emma Diamond.
Diamond and co-founder Julie Kramer, 24, say that posting about social influencers is entirely different than traditional celebrities. Even though there may be relatively fewer people paying attention to Charli and Chase versus, say, Kim Kardashian, the ones who do are really paying attention. “If you’re a really big fan of David Dobrik and the Vlog Squad and you don’t have any other friends [to talk about it with], it feels more special,” Kramer explains.
Today, Comments By Celebs is able to support a full-time staff of three through advertisements on the account and on its bi-weekly podcast. As a favorite among young Instagram users, they’re also flooded with summer intern requests (“It’s very flattering,” Emma says).
Not all gossip influencers run quite such lucrative business models — YouTube is littered with tea channels of varying success, devoted to influencer feuds like the James Charles and Tati Westbrook saga. TikTok Room has only partnered with a handful of small brands to monetize the account and doesn’t make nearly enough money for Elasia and Nat to live on; both have separate jobs. As its name would suggest, though, TikTok Room has ambitions to become the next Shade Room: Elasia and Nat are both interested in pursuing marketing post-college and say they want to build the account into something much bigger.
Just as newspapers and traditional media can have wildly different ethical standards — though anathema to respectable journalism, many tabloids continue to pay for stories — so too do gossip accounts. “We don’t post fake tea,” Elasia stresses, though she says they made mistakes in the early days of the Musical.ly page, and has deleted posts in the past. She says they blur out curse words, try to be as unbiased as possible, and never leak private messages or photos. While The Shade Room airs celebrity laundry both dirty and clean, Comments By Celebs, for instance, tends to avoid any negativity whatsoever. “Our whole goal is that we would never want the person in the picture to look at it and be like, ‘Wow, really sucks that they posted that,’” Emma explains.
YouTube channels are often far more vicious. As one anonymous beauty influencer told Cheryl Wischhover in a piece for Vox, “I feel like there are channels who do their job well and then there are other channels that stretch the truth and reach for drama just to post new content, which can lead to false news, rumors, and hurtful words against influencers. Some can even verge on bullying.”
Gossip accounts, most of which are run by people with no background in journalism, or in some cases no interest in it at all, are beholden to an ever-murky set of standards about what counts as fair game.
If an influencer hates what you post, but you know it’s true, do you delete it in the name of creating a positive community, or do you keep it up in the name of objective reporting? If you’re someone like Keemstar, who’s risen to the status of influencer himself, are people still supposed to take your opinion seriously? Ironically, the same debate is happening in journalism itself: When name-brand writers are known less for their work and mostly for their online presences, marketable personas can rise to the top, sometimes at the expense of quality or truthfulness.
Everyone in the business of news, then, whether it’s about politics or TikTok teens, is figuring out where they belong in a world where we are all, to some extent, influencers. In the early days of the celebrity gossip internet, bloggers like Perez Hilton would pride themselves in their refusal to bend to celebrities’ demands. Now that everyone is jockeying for clout on the same platforms, positivity, not snark, is what sells.
The tone and quality of gossip accounts may not seem to matter much for those uninterested in their subjects, but as the space grows — and as long as there continue to be more famous people than ever in history, it will — traditional media will have to learn from it. Conversely, gossip influencers may be the standard social news outlets of the future.
As Emma of Comments By Celeb says, “I don’t want people to see us as just an Instagram account. I want people to see us as a media company.”


vox--2020-02-11--The race for presidential delegates has begun. Track them here.

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Track them here .
The magic number to win the Democratic Party ’ s nomination for president is 1,990 delegates .
It could take months to officially get there .
Presidential candidates are all competing for a majority of 3,979 pledged delegates .
Separately , there are also 771 automatic delegates , otherwise known as “ superdelegates.
” But after a contentious 2016 primary , the Democratic National Committee changed its rules around superdelegates so they may now vote on the first ballot to select a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if a campaign has secured a supermajority of pledged delegates .
( Otherwise , they weigh in in the event of a second round of voting at the convention . )
Candidates are competing for these delegates against a backdrop of complex rules : Delegates are awarded proportionally , and most states and districts require a minimum threshold of 15 percent of the primary or caucus vote to earn pledged delegates .
This makes the contest a bit fairer , but also means it ’ s much harder to secure that magic number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the year .
The Iowa caucuses officially kicked off the delegate race .
But while the early states are all about gaining momentum , the race is ultimately about who can bag the most delegates and get to that magic number .
This could all be over very quickly if one candidate racks up an insurmountable lead and emerges from a crowded pack , or it could drag on into the spring and summer , ahead of the Democratic National Convention in July .
Vox has a delegate tracker , in partnership @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Virginia Institute of Politics .
It ’ s easiest to think about the primary race in three phases , as we explained in our primary calendar .
• Phase one : The early states .
This is the all-important opening salvo of Iowa , New Hampshire , Nevada , and South Carolina , but their importance is all about momentum — not delegates .
Taken together , these four states account for 155 delegates , or just 4 percent of the total pledged allocated delegates .
• Phase two : Super Tuesday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 3 , Super Tuesday and its 14 contests are when the presidential race shifts into a true national primary .
A total of 1,344 delegates will be allotted on Super Tuesday alone — about 33 percent of the total .
And 11 more state contests are up for grabs on March 10 and 17 .
By the time March 17 rolls around , 61 percent of the pledged delegates will be allotted .
• Phase three : The slog .
As Vox ’ s Andrew Prokop noted , we could either have a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will be by mid-March , or the primary could still be contested , as it was in 2016 .
If the latter , the contests to decide the winner will happen from March 18 to June 6 .
Those three months will be when the remaining 39 percent of delegates will be allotted ; the most important day in this stretch is April 28 , when New York and Pennsylvania vote , among others .
The four earliest states don ’ t contain a lot of delegates , but they act to winnow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This will be especially important this year , with more than 10 candidates still in the race .
Winnowing the field is half the battle .
The race to bag delegates starts in earnest on Super Tuesday .
“ It ’ s a virtual national primary because there are so many states .
The math itself changes , and every network has some sort of chart showing the projected delegate count , ” longtime California Democratic consultant Bill Carrick told Vox recently .
And this is not just about winning states , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at a congressional district level .
Most states award both delegates based on state-level totals as well as delegates in each individual district .
District-level delegates are the voters and local activists who sign up through their state party to act as delegates — together they make up the vast majority of eligible delegates .
It is critical for Democratic candidates to get at least a 15 percent threshold in states or individual congressional districts in order to qualify for pledged delegates .
And a big part of figuring out delegate math means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ numbers to target certain districts with demographics that could be favorable for them .
Here ’ s a breakdown of the delegate math , both pledged delegates and automatic delegates : Again , it ’ s worth noting the biggest DNC rules changes were around superdelegates .
That means these 771 superdelegates will largely sit on the sidelines on the first ballot , unless there ’ s already a candidate with a supermajority of pledged delegates .

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The magic number to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president is 1,991 pledged delegates.
No candidate has yet reached that number, but following the March 17 primaries, former Vice President Joe Biden became the first to cross the 1,000 pledged delegate mark, and has established a significant lead on his closest rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders. The final candidate remaining in the race, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, has won only two delegates so far.
Beyond the race’s 3,979 pledged delegates, there are also 771 automatic delegates, otherwise known as “superdelegates.” After a contentious 2016 primary, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) changed its rules around superdelegates so they may now vote on the first ballot to select a nominee at the Democratic National Convention only if a campaign has secured a supermajority of pledged delegates. Otherwise, they weigh in during a second round of voting at the convention.
Candidates are competing for these delegates against a backdrop of complex rules: Delegates are awarded proportionally, and most states and districts require a minimum threshold of 15 percent of the primary or caucus vote to earn pledged delegates. This may make the contest fairer but means it’s harder to secure that magic number in a contested primary until much later in the year.
The Iowa caucuses officially kicked off the delegate race on February 3. But while the early states were all about gaining momentum, the race is ultimately about who can bag the most delegates and get to that magic number. March was a critical month for delegate math: Super Tuesday, March 10, and the three contests on March 17 got us more than 50 percent of the way there.
Now that those contests have concluded, Biden has racked up a delegate lead that will be difficult for Sanders to surmount. But many states have still yet to vote, and the contest could continue on further into the spring and summer, ahead of the Democratic National Convention in July.
Vox has a tracker for the total number of delegates awarded, in partnership with our friends at Decision Desk and the Virginia Center for Politics.
Delegate math, briefly explained
The four earliest states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina — didn’t contain a lot of delegates, but they did winnow the field. This was especially important this year, as several Democratic candidates were still in the race on Super Tuesday, March 3, the first time a large number of delegates were up for grabs.
Winnowing the field — now down, essentially, to Sanders and Biden — is half the battle. The other half is winning enough of the vote to rack up an insurmountable delegate lead.
Doing this is not just about winning states: It’s also about winning delegates at a congressional district level. Most states award delegates proportionally based on state-level totals as well as delegates in each district. District-level delegates are the voters and local activists who sign up through their state party to act as delegates to the convention — together they make up the vast majority of pledged delegates.
It is critical for candidates to get at least a 15 percent threshold in states or individual congressional districts to qualify for pledged delegates. And a big part of figuring out delegate math means campaigns have to focus on crunching the numbers to target certain districts with demographics that could be favorable for them.
For instance, Sanders focused heavily on states with Latinx voters in March, counting on big wins in California and Nevada to boost his delegate count. That did not quite work out as the senator’s campaign hoped, but Biden’s big bets on Southern states that had large black electorates did pay dividends.
Here’s a breakdown of the delegate categories, both for pledged delegates and automatic delegates:
Pledged delegates
District level: 2,591
At-large: 898
Party leaders and state and local elected officials (PLEO): 490
Total: 3,979
Automatic (“super”) delegates
Democratic National Committee members: 445
Democratic members of Congress: 280
Democratic governors: 24
Party leaders: 22
Total: 771
It’s worth noting the DNC’s biggest rules changes were around superdelegates. That means these 771 superdelegates will largely sit on the sidelines on the first ballot unless there’s already a candidate with a supermajority of pledged delegates.
Correction: An earlier version of this story said it takes 1,990 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. The correct number is 1,991.


vox--2020-02-11--How the Nevada Democratic caucuses will work

With New Hampshire ’ s primary voting now complete , the next contest for the Democratic presidential contenders will be the Nevada caucuses on Saturday , February 22 , at noon Pacific time .
But will these caucuses turn out to be a disaster like Iowa ’ s did ?
Already , Nevada Democrats have abandoned plans to use Shadow Inc. , the vendor for a vote-reporting app that performed so poorly in Iowa .
They need a plan B , and we don ’ t yet know very much about what it will be .
Beyond the tech support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ similar underlying issue that plagued Iowa : They have to report three sets of results on caucus day for the first time this year .
That would be an initial vote total , a final vote total ( after realignment and the elimination of lower-performing candidates ) , and a delegate number .
Those three sets of numbers added complexity to the tallying in Iowa — and provided many more opportunities for human error to become evident .
The New York Times estimated that there were “ inconsistencies in the reported data ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precincts .
And the same could well prove true in Nevada .
Beyond that , there ’ s another complication : early voting .
Iowa didn ’ t have any early voting , but Nevada is going to try to fold it into the caucus process , using ranked-choice ballots by early voters submitted in advance .
That could prove time-consuming or confusing as it plays out in individual precincts .
Finally , there ’ s one more unusual , perfect-for-Nevada twist — ties in the delegate allocation process will be resolved by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
High card wins .
Three sets of results , again To start off — once again , we ’ ll be in the confusing situation of getting not just one Nevada caucus result but three .
They are : 1 ) The pre-realignment vote total : This is the initial tally of how many people prefer each candidate at each of the many precinct caucus sites , and the first-preference choices among all early votes .
They are all added together for a statewide total .
2 ) The final vote total @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supporters of a candidate who got less than a certain threshold of the vote in a precinct ( 15 percent is the standard ) can shift their support to another candidate .
Candidates who are below the viability threshold are eliminated as “ nonviable , ” and a new and final tally of only viable candidates is taken .
So this is who got the most votes after a reshuffling .
3 ) County delegates : Finally , the final vote total in each precinct is then used to assign each viable candidate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There is one difference with Iowa here , in that Nevada ’ s delegate results will be reported only in terms of county delegates — not “ state delegate equivalents , ” the product of a complicated formula .
The reason is that Iowa lets each county choose how many delegates it wants to have at its county convention .
Counties of similar sizes can make very different choices here , so Iowa has to weight the various county delegate results in precincts by a formula to estimate how many “ state delegate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , however , standardizes its delegate allotment by precinct across the state .
So the county delegate numbers that come out of each precinct will simply be totaled statewide to come up with a “ winner ” in county delegates .
In 2008 and 2016 , this was the only result the Nevada Democratic caucuses reported — so , for instance , when Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders 52 percent to 47 percent , those percentages were of county delegates ( not actual votes ) .
But this year , as in Iowa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will be reported as well .
And as we ’ ve already seen , that can result in different candidates winning different metrics .
The latest Iowa results show Sanders winning the initial vote tally by a few percentage points , winning the final vote tally more narrowly , and very barely losing the delegate tally to Pete Buttigieg .
A similar outcome could conceivably happen in Nevada as well .
Nevada Democrats are incorporating early voting into their caucuses One change from Iowa is that the voting in Nevada will actually begin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an early voting period , from February 15 to 18 .
And while it ’ s a bit tricky to incorporate early votes into the many precinct caucuses unfolding across the state , that ’ s just what Nevada Democrats are trying to do .
The early voters will not , of course , be physically present to participate in the caucuses .
But they will be asked in advance to rank up to five candidates by their order of preference .
For instance , a voter could pick Tom Steyer as his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second , Pete Buttigieg as his third , Joe Biden as his fourth , and Elizabeth Warren as his fifth .
And there are expected to be a lot of early voters — the Nevada Democratic Party anticipates around half of total caucus participants will vote early .
Now fast-forward to the day of the caucuses .
As in Iowa , they will take place in individual precinct gatherings .
First off , attendees in each precinct caucus will divide into groups and record their first-preference votes .
Then , in an added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voters for that precinct will also be revealed and added to those groups .
Realignment comes next .
As in Iowa , any supporters of candidates with more than 15 percent support in the precinct ( including both in-person and early votes ) get locked in .
Supporters of candidates below that threshold , though , get to realign .
They can back a viable candidate , combine forces to make a nonviable candidate viable , or refuse to support anyone .
Once this in-person realignment is done , then the early votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preference get realigned .
They are allotted to their highest-ranking choice who is now viable in the room .
So let ’ s say in our precinct , Biden , Sanders , and Warren are now viable , with everyone else below 15 percent support .
Our sample early voter would then be realigned away from his top three nonviable choices ( Steyer , Klobuchar , and Buttigieg ) to his fourth choice , Biden .
The Nevada Democrats will break ties by drawing cards Finally , and for a bit of fun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precinct caucus culminates in the awarding of county convention delegates to each candidate .
But because these delegates are actual people and can ’ t be broken up into fractions , sometimes the problem of a tie arises .
Iowans often broke these ties by flipping coins , but Nevada has its own way of doing things : drawing cards .
Each precinct location will be given an unopened deck of cards by the Nevada Democratic Party .
That deck then has to be shuffled at least seven times by the precinct chair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidate ’ s group will draw a card .
The high card wins the delegate .
( Aces are high .
The suit order is spades highest , then hearts , diamonds , and clubs .
Jokers and extra cards should be removed . )

With New Hampshire’s primary voting now complete, the next contest for the Democratic presidential contenders will be the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, February 22, at noon Pacific time.
But will these caucuses turn out to be a disaster like Iowa’s did?
Already, Nevada Democrats have abandoned plans to use Shadow Inc., the vendor for a vote-reporting app that performed so poorly in Iowa. They need a plan B, and we don’t yet know very much about what it will be.
Beyond the tech support challenges, they’ll face a similar underlying issue that plagued Iowa: They have to report three sets of results on caucus day for the first time this year. That would be an initial vote total, a final vote total (after realignment and the elimination of lower-performing candidates), and a delegate number.
Those three sets of numbers added complexity to the tallying in Iowa — and provided many more opportunities for human error to become evident. The New York Times estimated that there were “inconsistencies in the reported data” for at least one in six Iowa precincts. And the same could well prove true in Nevada.
Beyond that, there’s another complication: early voting. Iowa didn’t have any early voting, but Nevada is going to try to fold it into the caucus process, using ranked-choice ballots by early voters submitted in advance. That could prove time-consuming or confusing as it plays out in individual precincts.
Finally, there’s one more unusual, perfect-for-Nevada twist — ties in the delegate allocation process will be resolved by, you guessed it, drawing cards. High card wins.
Three sets of results, again
To start off — once again, we’ll be in the confusing situation of getting not just one Nevada caucus result but three. They are:
1) The pre-realignment vote total: This is the initial tally of how many people prefer each candidate at each of the many precinct caucus sites, and the first-preference choices among all early votes. They are all added together for a statewide total.
2) The final vote total: After the first tally, any supporters of a candidate who got less than a certain threshold of the vote in a precinct (15 percent is the standard) can shift their support to another candidate. Candidates who are below the viability threshold are eliminated as “nonviable,” and a new and final tally of only viable candidates is taken. So this is who got the most votes after a reshuffling.
3) County delegates: Finally, the final vote total in each precinct is then used to assign each viable candidate a certain number of county delegates.
There is one difference with Iowa: Nevada’s delegate results will be reported only in terms of county delegates — not “state delegate equivalents,” the product of a complicated formula.
The reason is that Iowa lets each county choose how many delegates it wants to have at its county convention. Counties of similar sizes can make very different choices here, so Iowa has to weight the various county delegate results in precincts by a formula to estimate how many “state delegate equivalents” that would be.
Nevada, however, standardizes its delegate allotment by precinct across the state. So the county delegate numbers that come out of each precinct will simply be totaled statewide to come up with a “winner” in county delegates. In 2008 and 2016, this was the only result the Nevada Democratic caucuses reported — so, for instance, when Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders 52 percent to 47 percent, those percentages were of county delegates (not actual votes).
But this year, as in Iowa, the pre-realignment and final vote totals will be reported as well. And as we’ve already seen, that can result in different candidates winning different metrics. The latest Iowa results show Sanders winning the initial vote tally by a few percentage points, winning the final vote tally more narrowly, and very barely losing the delegate tally to Pete Buttigieg. A similar outcome could conceivably happen in Nevada as well.
Nevada Democrats are incorporating early voting into their caucuses
One change from Iowa is that the voting in Nevada will actually begin a week before the caucuses — in an early voting period, from February 15 to 18.
And while it’s a bit tricky to incorporate early votes into the many precinct caucuses unfolding across the state, that’s just what Nevada Democrats are trying to do.
The early voters will not be physically present to participate in the caucuses. But they will be asked in advance to rank up to five candidates by their order of preference. For instance, a voter could pick Tom Steyer as their first choice, Amy Klobuchar as their second, Pete Buttigieg as their third, Joe Biden as their fourth, and Elizabeth Warren as their fifth.
And there are expected to be a lot of early voters — the Nevada Democratic Party anticipates around half of total caucus participants will vote early.
Now fast-forward to the day of the caucuses. As in Iowa, they will take place in individual precinct gatherings.
First off, attendees in each precinct caucus will divide into groups and record their first-preference votes.
Then, in an added step, the first choices for early voters for that precinct will also be revealed and added to those groups.
Realignment comes next. As in Iowa, any supporters of candidates with more than 15 percent support in the precinct (including both in-person and early votes) get locked in. Supporters of candidates below that threshold, though, get to realign. They can back a viable candidate, combine forces to make a nonviable candidate viable, or refuse to support anyone.
Once this in-person realignment is done, then the early votes who backed nonviable candidates as their first preference get realigned. They are allotted to their highest-ranking choice who is now viable in the room.
So let’s say in our precinct, Biden, Sanders, and Warren are now viable, with everyone else below 15 percent support. Our sample early voter would then be realigned away from their top three nonviable choices (Steyer, Klobuchar, and Buttigieg) to their fourth choice, Biden.
The Nevada Democrats will break ties by drawing cards
Finally, and for a bit of fun: As in Iowa, each Nevada precinct caucus culminates in the awarding of county convention delegates to each candidate. But because these delegates are actual people and can’t be broken up into fractions, sometimes the problem of a tie arises.
Iowans often broke these ties by flipping coins, but Nevada has its own way of doing things: drawing cards.
Each precinct location will be given an unopened deck of cards by the Nevada Democratic Party. That deck then has to be shuffled at least seven times by the precinct chair or site lead. And then each candidate’s group will draw a card. The high card wins the delegate. (Aces are high. The suit order is spades highest, then hearts, diamonds, and clubs. Jokers and extra cards should be removed.)


vox--2020-02-11--3 winners and 3 losers from the New Hampshire primary

New Hampshire ’ s first-in-the-nation primary Tuesday night gave us what we were denied by the Iowa caucuses last week : a clear sense of which campaigns are in good shape — and which ones are in trouble .
The 2020 Iowa caucuses were incredibly anticlimactic .
There were no official results on the night of the caucuses amid copious technical glitches , and Pete Buttigieg declared himself the victor with exactly zero percent of caucus sites reporting .
Ultimately , the popular vote and delegate counts split , with Bernie Sanders taking the former and Buttigieg the latter ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if the affair had been scripted to infuriate Sanders ’ s most fervent and conspiratorial supporters .
The New Hampshire primary was almost the opposite of that experience .
The results came fast and furious , and the big story of the night was known even before the last polls closed at 8 pm : Amy Klobuchar had surged to a close third behind Sanders and Buttigieg , while Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden flamed out in dramatic fashion after having led the race for stints in the past year .
In a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the primary .
But in another , more metaphorical sense that enables journalists to write longer analyses like this one , the night had several winners and several losers .
Here they are .
It might seem kind of obvious to say that the winner of the New Hampshire primary is , in fact , a winner of the night .
But his margin of victory was really narrow , and a lot of the commentary on election night has focused on Sanders underperforming his 2016 result .
So it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s victory does put him in a commanding position in the Democratic primary .
Sanders has now won New Hampshire and won the most votes in Iowa , the kind of results you expect from an eventual winner .
In the past week , he moved into first place in both the FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics national poll averages .
His fundraising totals last quarter were top of the field , and he boasts a campaign operation effective enough to get volunteers to more than 20 percent of all New Hampshire households in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rival for most of the race , Joe Biden , performed abysmally in both of the early contests .
Elizabeth Warren , whose stubbornly high national polling numbers have prevented Sanders from fully consolidating the party ’ s progressive flank , appears to be flatlining .
Pete Buttigieg , Bernie ’ s closest rival in both of the earliest contests , is having trouble improving his poll numbers with nonwhite voters heading into more diverse states — and moderate alternatives like Amy Klobuchar and Mike Bloomberg are currently preventing consolidation behind him .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then , isn ’ t just an expected result .
It establishes him as the favorite .
The big question now is if anyone else in the field can stop him .
No one , not even Joe Biden himself , expected him to win Tuesday .
At the last debate , Biden acknowledged as much , noting his defeat in the Iowa caucus before his likely loss in New Hampshire : “ I took a hit in Iowa , and I ’ ll probably take a hit here.
” And take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national frontrunner finished a dismal fifth — a worse showing than most people expected .
Biden not only failed to make the top three but , with 82 percent of precincts reporting , received less than 10 percent of the vote .
If he had a shot in New Hampshire , it was the possibility that he ’ d grab more moderate and conservative voters in the party ; instead , it seems Klobuchar and Buttigieg split most of those votes , leaving little room for Biden .
It ’ s a potential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come , especially after his poor showing in Iowa .
Biden ’ s campaign seemingly believes he still has a chance , largely because he ’ s polled well with black voters and in South Carolina — which will be the fourth state to vote and the first state with a lot of black voters , a crucial part of the Democratic base .
The theory is Biden could ride a big win in South Carolina into Super Tuesday , when a bunch of states will vote , and win the nomination .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hampshire , though , that ’ s going to be much harder to pull off .
Meanwhile , Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( D-MA ) can consider herself lucky she didn ’ t have as bad a night as Biden — but it ’ s still not looking good for her prospects .
It wasn ’ t that long ago that Warren was leading national polls .
On top of that , New Hampshire is supposed to be a gim me for politicians from neighboring states .
John Kerry of Massachusetts edged out Vermonter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rest of the field far behind ; Mitt Romney ( then still a Massachusetts resident ) won by a wide margin in 2012 .
The state gave then-Massachusetts Gov .
Michael Dukakis his first big win in 1988 , and one reason for former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas ’ s failure in the 1992 primaries was not that he lost New Hampshire but that he won by too narrow a margin .
Indeed , Warren entered New Hampshire with a ton of built-in advantages .
Much of New Hampshire consumes Boston-area media : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and radio stations , many residents subscribe to the Boston Globe , and many more read Boston news online .
They know Elizabeth Warren .
Her failure in light of those advantages has to sting .
Warren is not entirely out , to be clear .
Anticipating a dismal New Hampshire performance , her campaign manager Roger Lau sent out a memo explaining how the campaign expects to recover .
In a nutshell , they expect to make up some ground in the delegate count in upcoming Super Tuesday states and at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her some leverage ahead of one .
But the numbers will shift in light of a very weak New Hampshire performance , and not in a positive way for Warren .
If the election had been held in mid-October , when Warren was narrowly edging Biden in the state ’ s polls and Sanders was a distant third , we ’ d be telling a very different story .
But Warren peaked at just the wrong time , and Klobuchar and Buttigieg peaked at exactly the right time .
That ’ s partly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ devastating nonetheless .
Pete Buttigieg is the 38-year-old former mayor of a smallish Midwestern city .
The last time he ran for a national Democratic Party position , a 2017 bid to chair the Democratic National Committee , he got so little support that he ended up dropping out before the votes were cast .
With this thin résumé , Buttigieg needed to do well in the first two primaries to prove that he was for real .
Well , he ’ s now won the delegate total in Iowa ( though the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) and come in a very close second in New Hampshire — an impressive achievement that shows he is definitely for real .
What ’ s more , the specifics of the results in New Hampshire give Team Buttigieg a lot of reasons for optimism .
Though Sanders was the heavy favorite in New Hampshire , Buttigieg got several points closer than the pre-election poll averages suggested .
Beating the expectation game helps candidates build momentum even when they aren ’ t actually winning the primary .
Buttigieg is poised to benefit from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fixates on Sanders somewhat underperforming the margins many thought his campaign could deliver .
Just as important , his biggest rival in the “ moderate ” lane , Biden , cratered in New Hampshire .
This result , following Biden ’ s poor performance in Iowa , could well lead his supporters to abandon a seemingly sinking ship .
Buttigieg could be the beneficiary , especially in upcoming states ( Nevada and South Carolina ) where he ’ s currently not polling that well .
Klobuchar , who may plausibly have prevented an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is also well positioned to compete for Biden voters — but Buttigieg has to be considered the favorite in that lane .
There ’ s a lot of voting left .
But the New Hampshire results put Buttigieg in an enviable position in the coming weeks .
In the two most recent heated Democratic presidential nomination contests , the field shrank quite quickly .
In 2016 , the race went down to just Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on the night of the Iowa caucuses .
In 2008 , the race shrank to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s primary , and John Edwards dropped out before Super Tuesday , leaving Clinton and Barack Obama to slug it out .
This year , things look to be ... more complicated .
Sanders , Buttigieg , and Klobuchar are all clearly staying in due to their strong performances in New Hampshire .
Biden , the former national frontrunner , says he ’ s not going anywhere either — he wants to contest South Carolina .
Warren may face some tough choices about her campaign ’ s future in the coming days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hours beforehand , her campaign released a lengthy memo vowing she ’ d keep pushing onward .
There ’ s more .
Billionaire Tom Steyer didn ’ t prove to be much of a factor in either Iowa or New Hampshire , but he has polled strongly in South Carolina and plans to stay in the race until then at least .
And billionaire Mike Bloomberg isn ’ t contesting the first four states , but he ’ s paying for a huge ad campaign flooding the zone for the Super Tuesday contests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rather sizable on Super Tuesday — and that could be a problem for Democrats .
The party has a rule requiring proportional allocation of delegates .
As a result , if the big delegate prizes in early March are split among several candidates , it could prove nearly impossible for any one of them to actually obtain a majority with the states remaining .
A messy contested convention in July would be the result .
Klobmentum ?
The Klobucharge ?
The Klobbering ?
Whatever you dub it , Amy Klobuchar had a breakout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Minnesota Democrat has positioned herself as a strong alternative to fellow moderates Biden and Buttigieg , and her slow and steady performance on the campaign trail and on the debate stage is starting to pay off .
After coming in fifth place in the Iowa caucuses , Klobuchar surged into the top three in the Granite State , well ahead of Biden and Warren , both of whom have led Klobuchar in most national and state polls for the past year .
The finish gives her campaign a boost as we head @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Super Tuesday .
So what happened ?
As Vox ’ s Ella Nilsen wrote in January , Klobuchar has been courting Biden supporters in New Hampshire for a while : Polls ahead of the primary indicated Klobuchar was gaining momentum , and her debate performance in Manchester on Friday was her strongest yet .
Klobuchar and Warren gave moving answers on abortion and reproductive rights .
And Klobuchar delivered another memorable moment in a clash with Buttigieg , whom she appears to have little affinity for .
She batted back Buttigieg ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ negative and put up a strong defense of her and her colleagues ’ recent work in President Donald Trump ’ s impeachment trial .
“ Pete , when you were campaigning through Iowa as three of us were jurors in that impeachment hearing , you said that it was exhausting to watch and that you wanted to turn the channel and watch cartoons , ” she said .
“ It is easy to go after Washington , because that ’ s a popular thing to do.
” It ’ s not the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mayor on the debate stage — she also took a swipe at him over the double standard for men and women in politics in November .
“ Of the women on the stage , do I think we would be standing on that stage if we had the experience he had ?
No , I don ’ t , ” she said .
Amy is not a fan of Pete , and after Tuesday , she has qualified to be in the next debate in Nevada , where we can probably expect a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can , the perfect primary night .
The results come in rapidly , from all over the state .
They come in at a reasonable time , like 8 pm ET , so that political observers learn the results rapidly but people in the state still have plenty of time to vote .
They are precise enough that you can discern the relative performance of candidates finishing within a handful of points of each other .
That ’ s basically the night that New Hampshire produced on Tuesday , and it could not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the 2020 Iowa caucus .
The only reason to care about the early primaries is that they drive media narratives , perceptions of candidate viability , and thus later primaries in states that actually matter for delegate count .
Iowa and New Hampshire just don ’ t award enough delegates to be important on their own ( 41 and 24 , respectively ) without that perception effect .
That ’ s why the Iowa debacle was so disastrous .
Its failure to promptly and accurately report results didn ’ t just make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weakened the state ’ s ability to drive national narratives .
At best , the state was able to give Buttigieg a slight boost .
But , tellingly , the bigger New Hampshire surprise was the rise of Klobuchar , something the Iowa results didn ’ t even hint at and that was perhaps driven instead by her highly regarded debate performance between Iowa and New Hampshire .
Iowa ’ s incompetence consigned it to near-irrelevance — there ’ s much talk that 2020 could be the last first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses — whereas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s contest will help ensure its results reverberate into Nevada and South Carolina .

New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary Tuesday night gave us what we were denied by the Iowa caucuses last week: a clear sense of which campaigns are in good shape — and which ones are in trouble.
The 2020 Iowa caucuses were incredibly anticlimactic. There were no official results on the night of the caucuses amid copious technical glitches, and Pete Buttigieg declared himself the victor with exactly zero percent of caucus sites reporting. Ultimately, the popular vote and delegate counts split, with Bernie Sanders taking the former and Buttigieg the latter (pending a Sanders-requested recanvass), as if the affair had been scripted to infuriate Sanders’s most fervent and conspiratorial supporters.
The New Hampshire primary was almost the opposite of that experience. The results came fast and furious, and the big story of the night was known even before the last polls closed at 8 pm: Amy Klobuchar had surged to a close third behind Sanders and Buttigieg, while Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden flamed out in dramatic fashion after having led the race for stints in the past year.
Related Live results for the New Hampshire Democratic primary
In a literal sense, Sanders was the winner of the primary. But in another, more metaphorical sense that enables journalists to write longer analyses like this one, the night had several winners and several losers. Here they are.
It might seem kind of obvious to say that the winner of the New Hampshire primary is, in fact, a winner of the night. But his margin of victory was really narrow, and a lot of the commentary on election night has focused on Sanders underperforming his 2016 result. So it’s worth stating this clearly: Bernie Sanders’s victory does put him in a commanding position in the Democratic primary.
Sanders has now won New Hampshire and won the most votes in Iowa, the kind of results you expect from an eventual winner. In the past week, he moved into first place in both the FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics national poll averages. His fundraising totals last quarter were top of the field, and he boasts a campaign operation effective enough to get volunteers to more than 20 percent of all New Hampshire households in a single day.
His most significant rival for most of the race, Joe Biden, performed abysmally in both of the early contests. Elizabeth Warren, whose stubbornly high national polling numbers have prevented Sanders from fully consolidating the party’s progressive flank, appears to be flatlining. Pete Buttigieg, Sanders’s closest rival in both of the earliest contests, is having trouble improving his poll numbers with nonwhite voters heading into more diverse states — and moderate alternatives like Amy Klobuchar and Mike Bloomberg are currently preventing consolidation behind him.
Sanders’s win in New Hampshire, then, isn’t just an expected result. It establishes him as the favorite. The big question now is if anyone else in the field can stop him.
—Zack Beauchamp
Loser: Former frontrunners
No one, not even Joe Biden himself, expected him to win Tuesday. At the last debate, Biden acknowledged as much, noting his defeat in the Iowa caucus before his likely loss in New Hampshire: “I took a hit in Iowa, and I’ll probably take a hit here.”
And take a hit he did. The former national frontrunner finished a dismal fifth — a worse showing than most people expected. Biden not only failed to make the top three but, with 82 percent of precincts reporting, received less than 10 percent of the vote. If he had a shot in New Hampshire, it was the possibility that he’d grab more moderate and conservative voters in the party; instead, it seems Klobuchar and Buttigieg split most of those votes, leaving little room for Biden.
It’s a potential red flag for what’s to come, especially after his poor showing in Iowa. Biden’s campaign seemingly believes he still has a chance, largely because he’s polled well with black voters and in South Carolina — which will be the fourth state to vote and the first state with a lot of black voters, a crucial part of the Democratic base. The theory is Biden could ride a big win in South Carolina into Super Tuesday, when a bunch of states will vote, and win the nomination. After such a huge loss in New Hampshire, though, that’s going to be much harder to pull off.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren can consider herself lucky she didn’t have as bad a night as Biden — but it’s still not looking good for her prospects.
It wasn’t that long ago that Warren was leading national polls. On top of that, New Hampshire is supposed to be a gimme for politicians from neighboring states. John Kerry of Massachusetts edged out Vermonter Howard Dean in 2004, with the rest of the field far behind; Mitt Romney (then still a Massachusetts resident) won by a wide margin in 2012. The state gave then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis his first big win in 1988, and one reason for former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas’s failure in the 1992 primaries was not that he lost New Hampshire but that he won by too narrow a margin.
Indeed, Warren entered New Hampshire with a ton of built-in advantages. Much of New Hampshire consumes Boston-area media: Some of the state gets Boston TV and radio stations, many residents subscribe to the Boston Globe, and many more read Boston news online. They know Elizabeth Warren. Her failure in light of those advantages has to sting.
Warren is not entirely out, to be clear. Anticipating a dismal New Hampshire performance, her campaign manager Roger Lau sent out a memo explaining how the campaign expects to recover. In a nutshell, they expect to make up some ground in the delegate count in upcoming Super Tuesday states and at least force a brokered convention, or give her some leverage ahead of one. But the numbers will shift in light of a very weak New Hampshire performance, and not in a positive way for Warren.
If the election had been held in mid-October, when Warren was narrowly edging Biden in the state’s polls and Sanders was a distant third, we’d be telling a very different story. But Warren peaked at just the wrong time, and Klobuchar and Buttigieg peaked at exactly the right time. That’s partly sheer luck. But it’s devastating nonetheless.
—German Lopez and Dylan Matthews
Pete Buttigieg is the 38-year-old former mayor of a smallish Midwestern city. The last time he ran for a national Democratic Party position, a 2017 bid to chair the Democratic National Committee, he got so little support that he ended up dropping out before the votes were cast.
With this thin résumé, Buttigieg needed to do well in the first two primaries to prove that he was for real. Well, he’s now won the delegate total in Iowa (though the Sanders camp has called for a recanvass) and come in a very close second in New Hampshire — an impressive achievement that shows he is definitely for real. What’s more, the specifics of the results in New Hampshire give Team Buttigieg a lot of reasons for optimism.
Though Sanders was the heavy favorite in New Hampshire, Buttigieg got several points closer than the pre-election poll averages suggested. Beating the expectation game helps candidates build momentum even when they aren’t actually winning the primary. Buttigieg is poised to benefit from post-primary coverage — especially if the media fixates on Sanders somewhat underperforming the margins many thought his campaign could deliver.
Just as important, his biggest rival in the “moderate” lane, Biden, cratered in New Hampshire. This result, following Biden’s poor performance in Iowa, could well lead his supporters to abandon a seemingly sinking ship. Buttigieg could be the beneficiary, especially in upcoming states (Nevada and South Carolina) where he’s currently not polling that well. Klobuchar, who may plausibly have prevented an outright New Hampshire win for Buttigieg, is also well positioned to compete for Biden voters — but Buttigieg has to be considered the favorite in that lane.
There’s a lot of voting left. But the New Hampshire results put Buttigieg in an enviable position in the coming weeks.
—ZB
Loser: Winnowing
In the two most recent heated Democratic presidential nomination contests, the field shrank quite quickly. In 2016, the race went down to just Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on the night of the Iowa caucuses. In 2008, the race shrank to just three candidates shortly after New Hampshire’s primary, and John Edwards dropped out before Super Tuesday, leaving Clinton and Barack Obama to slug it out.
This year, things look to be ... more complicated.
Sanders, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar are all clearly staying in due to their strong performances in New Hampshire. Biden, the former national frontrunner, says he’s not going anywhere either — he wants to contest South Carolina. Warren may face some tough choices about her campaign’s future in the coming days given her poor performance Tuesday, but hours beforehand, her campaign released a lengthy memo vowing she’d keep pushing onward.
There’s more. Billionaire Tom Steyer didn’t prove to be much of a factor in either Iowa or New Hampshire, but he has polled strongly in South Carolina and plans to stay in the race until then at least. And billionaire Mike Bloomberg isn’t contesting the first four states, but he’s paying for a huge ad campaign flooding the zone for the Super Tuesday contests.
So the field could still be rather sizable on Super Tuesday — and that could be a problem for Democrats. The party has a rule requiring proportional allocation of delegates. As a result, if the big delegate prizes in early March are split among several candidates, it could prove nearly impossible for any one of them to actually obtain a majority with the states remaining. A messy contested convention in July would be the result.
—Andrew Prokop
Klobmentum? The Klobucharge? The Klobbering? Whatever you dub it, Amy Klobuchar had a breakout night on Tuesday in New Hampshire.
The Minnesota Democrat has positioned herself as a strong alternative to fellow moderates Biden and Buttigieg, and her slow and steady performance on the campaign trail and on the debate stage is starting to pay off. After coming in fifth place in the Iowa caucuses, Klobuchar surged into the top three in the Granite State, well ahead of Biden and Warren, both of whom have led Klobuchar in most national and state polls for the past year. The finish gives her campaign a boost as we head into Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday.
So what happened? As Vox’s Ella Nilsen wrote in January, Klobuchar has been courting Biden supporters in New Hampshire for a while:
Klobuchar’s case to voters: She has a record of handily winning elections (and Trump counties) in her home state of Minnesota, a state she likes to point out also has a history of electing to executive office controversial figures with a penchant for drama, like former Gov. Jesse Ventura.
Polls ahead of the primary indicated Klobuchar was gaining momentum, and her debate performance in Manchester on Friday was her strongest yet.
Klobuchar and Warren gave moving answers on abortion and reproductive rights. And Klobuchar delivered another memorable moment in a clash with Buttigieg, whom she appears to have little affinity for. She batted back Buttigieg’s attempts to cast political experience as a negative and put up a strong defense of her and her colleagues’ recent work in President Trump’s impeachment trial.
“Pete, when you were campaigning through Iowa as three of us were jurors in that impeachment hearing, you said that it was exhausting to watch and that you wanted to turn the channel and watch cartoons,” she said. “It is easy to go after Washington, because that’s a popular thing to do.”
It’s not the first time Klobuchar has gone after Buttigieg on the debate stage — she also took a swipe at him over the double standard for men and women in politics in November. “Of the women on the stage, do I think we would be standing on that stage if we had the experience he had? No, I don’t,” she said.
Amy is not a fan of Pete, and after Tuesday, she has qualified to be in the next debate in Nevada, where we can probably expect a third clash.
—Emily Stewart
Imagine, if you can, the perfect primary night. The results come in rapidly, from all over the state. They come in at a reasonable time, like 8 pm ET, so that political observers learn the results rapidly but people in the state still have plenty of time to vote. They are precise enough that you can discern the relative performance of candidates finishing within a handful of points of each other.
That’s basically the night that New Hampshire produced on Tuesday, and it could not be more different from the debacle that was the 2020 Iowa caucus. The only reason to care about the early primaries is that they drive media narratives, perceptions of candidate viability, and thus later primaries in states that actually matter for delegate count. Iowa and New Hampshire just don’t award enough delegates to be important on their own (41 and 24, respectively) without that perception effect.
That’s why the Iowa debacle was so disastrous. Its failure to promptly and accurately report results didn’t just make caucus night a bust — it severely weakened the state’s ability to drive national narratives. At best, the state was able to give Buttigieg a slight boost. But, tellingly, the bigger New Hampshire surprise was the rise of Klobuchar, something the Iowa results didn’t even hint at and that was perhaps driven instead by her highly regarded debate performance between Iowa and New Hampshire.
Iowa’s incompetence consigned it to near-irrelevance — there’s much talk that 2020 could be the last first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses — whereas the competent execution of New Hampshire’s contest will help ensure its results reverberate into Nevada and South Carolina.
—DM
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New Hampshire felt the Bern at the New Hampshire primary. Vox’s Ella Nilsen reports from Bernie Sanders’s victory party and Vox’s Matthew Yglesias makes the case for a President Sanders.
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