Here are the results with 8,000 votes, mostly coming from website traffic:
Here are the results with 20,000 votes, after we sent out an email to our list asking people to vote.
The website traffic skews more pro-Harris and Warren. The email list is a little more Bernie- and Biden-friendly.
After that, into the evening and overnight, the results skew toward whichever campaign supporters are best at rallying fellow supporters to the poll. And right now, after another 20,000 votes came in, that is the Bernie crowd. Interestingly, every candidate held their own except for Kamala Harris, probably stemming from her low overall name ID and outsized support on Daily Kos proper.
I want to stress that there is nothing untoward about supporters of candidates spamming the poll. We’re on the lookout for Russians, bots, and Russian bots. Humans are kosher. I like that the poll measures online intensity, and as of now, Bernie still has a great deal of online residual support.
Yet his ability to draw 60 percent of the Daily Kos straw poll vote is long gone. The best he could muster was a 3-point boost. It’s painfully clear he doesn’t realize it, but he’s not winning shit this cycle. The best he can hope for is to influence the debate, but his issues aren’t so out-of-the-mainstream anymore. With Warren and others picking up the mantle, the left is well represented in this field.
Thus, the real game right now is that Harris-Warren duopoly. With nearly half of the vote in a gazillion-person field, they are the gold standard. Or, as I’ve been saying, they’re the eventual ticket. And I’ll keep saying it until either one of them stumbles, or another name in this list rocks the field. We’ve got more than a year of this ahead of us, so plenty of time for either to happen.
For now, Harris’ and Warren’s strength has given several potential candidates pause, with Joe Biden, Beto O’Rourke, and Michael Bloomberg wondering if there’s room for someone of less … strident politics. Biden has his Anita Hill problem, authorship of that hated crime bill, and sell-past-date feeling. He can exit stage left a winner, or go out a loser. Bloomberg is another billionaire white guy in a world where we have good reason to be triggered by billionaire white guys. Beto isn’t someone who will take the fight to the enemy, preferring to run as an eternal optimist. He wouldn’t even attack Ted Cruz, who was so attackable! I don’t criticize. There’s a place for that kind of politics, particularly in a red-to-purpling state like Texas. But for a Democratic presidential primary? I have doubts. And clearly, so does he.
Witness Beto’s precipitous collapse as other candidates emerge. His announcement delay may not be fatal if he eventually decides to run, but he just got off a brutal and long Senate battle. He clearly needed to recharge. Yet the race is rich in talent, so what’s his lane? The fresh new face? Harris has snagged that mantle.
We still have to contend with the sea of white guys wanting to play, like Govs. Jay Inslee, Steve Bullock, and Jon Hickenlooper; New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (and Pete!, who is a joke of a candidate); Rep. Eric Swalwell; and who knows who else. Several wannabe candidates have already correctly read the room. Billionaire Tom Steyer and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti bowed out after staffing up, then realizing their lack of path to anything beyond the kiddie debates. You can never underestimate white guy confidence (see Northam, Ralph), but the field is already being culled.
I like that the four women in this week’s straw poll get 51 percent of the vote, while the five men get 39 percent.
Women drove our victories in 2018, both in terms of candidates, and in votes:
Democrats win because of women, as 2018’s 23-point gender gap proved.
Democrats rode that gender gap to a House national popular vote victory of 53.4-44.8, winning 60.7 million votes—IN A MIDTERM! In 2016, in a presidential year and presidential election, Russia’s favorite asset Donald Trump got 63 million votes.
How do you see that and not think “all-woman ticket?”
