Results from yesterday’s straw poll:
|
8/2 |
7/17 |
7/2 |
6/11 |
5/29 |
5/14 |
5/1 |
4/15 |
4/2 |
3/18 |
2/18 |
2/5 |
1/22 |
1/8 |
WARREN |
33 |
35 |
29 |
34 |
25 |
25 |
19 |
12 |
12 |
12 |
10 |
17 |
18 |
22 |
SANDERS |
25 |
20 |
25 |
25 |
34 |
26 |
34 |
40 |
33 |
38 |
44 |
13 |
12 |
11 |
Biden |
12 |
11 |
7 |
12 |
10 |
14 |
18 |
5 |
8 |
- |
8 |
11 |
13 |
14 |
Harris |
7 |
14 |
19 |
7 |
11 |
11 |
8 |
9 |
11 |
11 |
15 |
27 |
27 |
14 |
BUTTIGIEG |
6 |
7 |
7 |
10 |
9 |
9 |
10 |
21 |
18 |
6 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
YANG |
5 |
4 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
OTHER |
10 |
9 |
10 |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
UNSURE |
2 |
** |
** |
3 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
6 |
6 |
9 |
(VOTES) |
59.3K |
57.2K |
63.2K |
57.5K |
39.8K |
60K |
53.1K |
35.5K |
40.2K |
52.5K |
56K |
42.2K |
28K |
35.5K |
Elizabeth Warren has now gone two straight months at the top of the pile, with Bernie Sanders a strong second place. You can argue if you want, but those two had the strongest debate performances this week, so by that one metric, these results matter. (Of course, that’s not the only metric ...)
Also, among the credible candidates, the unapologetically liberal wing of the party (Warren and Sanders), is getting a pretty consistent 55-60% of the straw poll vote. That’s significantly less so than in the national scientific polling, where that number is around a third. Either way, there may come a point, early next year, when it would behoove that wing of the party to consolidate its support. No hurry right now! That 1-2 punch in the first debate was delicious.
Joe Biden is clinging to that low-teens level of support, most likely people who see the general election matchups against the Russian Asset in the White House and think he’s the closest thing to a sure-thing we have. (He isn’t.)
Not sure what happened to Kamala Harris. Ouch. Her support runs hot and cold, doesn’t it? She shows flashes of brilliance, inspiring people to rally around her, and then people get afraid and back off.
Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang are on pace to swap places in a couple of weeks. The Pete boomlet is long over, and no matter how much money he raises, the pre-debates hype of the super genius who spoke myriad languages hasn’t held up well. He’s good! Just not good enough to fully distinguish himself at the presidential level. His downward trajectory isn’t as fast as Beto O’Rourke’s—his rationale for running and biography are far more compelling—but it’s still unmistakably happening (here and in the national scientific polling).
Andrew Yang is a fun curiosity, and another candidate who wouldn’t get the time of day in the old Iowa-New Hampshire-dominated primary world. But in this one? He gets to elevate his core issue, the universal basic income, even if his actual prospects are zero.
Everyone else doesn’t matter. For all the gushing over Marianne Williamson these last few days, she garnered barely 1% of the vote, which is still more than this anti-vaxxer deserves. Hilariously, Bill de Blasio still brings up the rear, with only 27 votes out of 59,332 cast. No other candidate hit 2% of the vote, though the three that came closest were Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jay Inslee.
Perhaps the best favor the DNC has done this cycle is turn the debate-inclusion process into the de facto first-in-the-nation primary, rendering Iowa and New Hampshire mostly irrelevant. What’s Iowa going to do, hand a victory to Steve Bullock? We’d all point and laugh! The best Iowa can do is simply ratify what we already know—that there are 4-5 real candidates. Someone has to break the news to John Hickenlooper that he will never be president. Iowa is as good as anyone to finally drill that into his head.
But the first primary? It happened—debate rules that weeded out five of the announced candidates. The second one is taking place right now—it’s who will make it to the September debate, one which requires 130,000 donors and four polls at 2% (or better). That’s a ludicrously low bar to meet, yet only seven candidates have qualified so far—Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Harris, O’Rourke, Sanders, and Warren. Julian Castro, Andrew Yang, and Amy Klobuchar are within striking distance.
That said, the public polls are far more generous to the overall field than the Daily Kos straw poll. Among those of us paying the most attention, this is a pretty compact field.