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Election 2020: Democratic Primaries

Who WILL be the nominee?


  • Total voters
    25
  • Poll closed .

Jay59

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This one is simple. Who WILL be the nominee? Fill free to expand on who should be in the comments.
 
This one is simple. Who WILL be the nominee? Fill free to expand on who should be in the comments.

No majority going into convention=open convention. Hillary?
 
This one is simple. Who WILL be the nominee? Fill free to expand on who should be in the comments.

Its going to be brokered. That’s why the DNC put Bloomberg in. He’s not a player, he is just a push to sideline the left and isolate Bernie, then broker a viable VP behind Biden. (Or Hillary*)

Given the standards of today, she is imminently impeachable. It would actually be successful based on “pay for play” at the Clinton Foundation alone.
 
No majority going into convention=open convention. Hillary?
Won't happen. It may be all but decided by 4 March 2020, the day after Super Tuesday.

To me the real question is which of the big four get's sunk before Super Tuesday. Historically, no candidate has finished third or lower in both Iowa and New Hampshire and gone on to win. As a practical matter, two stories come out of the caucuses/primary. One is the winner and the other is the unexpected, which can be good or bad (remember the Dean scream)? Those two names get a massive amount of free national publicity.
 
Polling

Iowa
Buttigieg 22.0
Sanders 20.0
Biden 18.8
Warren 16.0

New Hampshire
Sanders 19.0
Buttigieg 17.7
Biden 14.3
Warren 13.3
 
This one is simple. Who WILL be the nominee? Feel free to expand on who should be in the comments.

There is nothing simple about deciding which presidential candidate to vote for at the primary election. All voters have to learn about each candidate's stances on the environment, the economy, trades, crime prevention, abortion, education, civil rights, and health care. Next, they have to look at each candidate's plans for tackling those problems and decide whose ideas are the best or most likely to pass. In November I can just look for the letter D, but choosing one liberal over another is impossible without doing research.

My current thinking is Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg can't possibly know how to be the Commander in Chief as men whose political careers never went past the mayor level, so my focus should be on Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
 

It can't be decided before all 50 states and 6 territories have finished their balloting. Super Toesday is just the busiest Election Day, not a majority of states having elections. This race is not going to be a blowout nationally when you add up all 56 elections.
 
It always is over before all the primaries are done, unless there is a brokered convention. In 2016, Hillary wrapped it the week before the final round, and that was unusually late.

In practical terms, it is frequently over in March. Momentum, money, publicity, endorsements are all important and all flow to candidates doing well. Hillary mathematically clinched in May, but in practical terms it was over before it started because of the endorsements and the super-delegates. Those won't be an issue this time, but one candidate could generate an insurmountable lead on Super Tuesday, for example by winning California, Texas and the North Carolina/Virginia pair.
 
It's sure shaping up to be Biden.

I'll still never quite get over how our Democratic nominee is basically chosen in Iowa.
 
No matter who it is I think we should impeach that mother ******!
 
No matter who it is I think we should impeach that mother ******!

That would require

a)an impeachable offense,
b)Republicans controlling the House, and
c)the White House providing a House investigation with any witnesses and documentation they request.

The problem is of course c). Without witnesses and documentations, you'll have no evidence to work off, and without a 2/3rds majority Senate for conviction, there'll be no removal from office.
 
It's sure shaping up to be Biden. I'll still never quite get over how our Democratic nominee is basically chosen in Iowa.
I can't see him surviving the scandal surrounding his son, but it hasn't hurt his poll numbers.

You cannot win the nomination in Iowa, only lose it.

lacking an impeachable offense has not slowed the Democrats noticably.
 
I can't see him surviving the scandal surrounding his son, but it hasn't hurt his poll numbers.

If it hasn’t hurt his poll numbers, then he’s probably doing a fair job of surviving the “scandal.”
 

Bloomberg put himself in, in hopes of dodging higher taxes. He fears that Biden won't be viable and a progressive will win, thereby increasing his tax burdens, hence his entry. I'm not sure how he 'sidelines the left' or 'isolates Bernie', since the left despises him; Warren is Bernie's greatest threat in this regard, while Bloomberg generally does best among moderates/blue dogs. I do think however, that he'll probably align with Biden or whoever he perceives to be the most friendly to his financial interests when/if it comes time to broker.

This one is simple. Who WILL be the nominee? Fill free to expand on who should be in the comments.

Bernie. I feel Biden will continue his glacial decay to be accelerated by losses in the early states, while the inverse is true of Sanders: slow growth that is accelerated by early state results if his strong polling there remains intact.

Warren has already fallen away, and the others have basically no chance; it is possible that Warren recovers so I'm not discounting her entirely. Moreover, it is exceedingly probable that Warren and Sanders have a compact to drop out and support/endorse the other, should one feel their chances of winning are no longer meaningful.
 
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How many more elections remain after Super Tuesday? I have to check the primary schedule, which I have never done before.
 
It looks like the last primary election is on June 2. The USVI Democratic Caucus is last on June 6.

On Super Tuesday, the following states will have Democratic elections: AL, AR, CA, CO, ME, MA, MN, NC, OK, TN, TX, UT, and VA. March 3 is also the date of the American Samoa Democratic Caucus. Democrats abroad will vote by mail from March 3-10.
 
How many more elections remain after Super Tuesday? I have to check the primary schedule, which I have never done before.
I can help with that. 2020 Presidential Calendar | Debates, Primaries, Conventions - Election Central Super Tuesday will allocate 1345 ordinary delegates out of 3936, basically 1/3. California's 416 delegates used to be chosen in May or June.

There are also 700+ unpledged "super"delegates, who are party leaders and have an automatic seat. The mini-scandal of 2016 was that Hillary Clinton had 90% of the superdelegates before the voting started. Due to a rule change, they will not have a vote on the first ballot. 1952 was the last time a second ballot was needed.
 
Bump for the new year.

Who will be the nominee?
 
Debate tonight. Will it change anything important?

J
 
Iowa is in one week. Any new thoughts?
 
The Iowa caucuses are now officially over (I think). There is some debate as to who won, but it is clear that Joe Biden lost. In the New Hampshire polls, Biden's average dropped five percent since Wednesday. Mayor Pete is up sharply, Warren has rebounded a bit and Klobuchar is approaching double digits. Still, Bernie is from next door Vermont and he's leading in all the polls.

In an unprecedented action, the Des Moines Register did not release it's final poll. This is the gold standard of polls and the move underscores that polling is subject to manipulation. In this case, Mayor Pete's name was omitted on a questionaire. When it could not be proven isolated, the paper pulled the whole thing. Would a poll of lesser integrity have persisted? Have they already? We don't know.

There will be a fresh poll after New Hampshire with a three week time frame, so that it ends before Super Tuesday. See you there.
 
Biden seems to have been significantly hurt by Iowa. I question whether he'll make it through the whole nomination process, and speculate whether he'll drop out within a month or two, if not sooner.

Polling certainly seems to indicate that either Buttigieg or Sanders will take the next few primaries.

I wonder if it's an effect of how many people don't even look at candidates much before voting. I mean, personally I've been keeping an eye on the options since early 2019 probably, if not longer. But I've heard anecdotes of people not even being aware of what Sanders was running on, or that person who was surprised Buttigeg was in a same-sex marriage and thought it was wrong.

Quite clearly, there are plenty of people much less informed about the options, and that may explain why Biden dropped so badly in Iowa.

I was looking at RCP averages for Iowa and NH, and Biden was chugging along in the lead until the last few months of 2019 in Iowa, when he dropped and never really recovered. For NH it happened in the beginning of December.

I'm wondering if it's a "now we're paying attention' effect.
 
You say the next few, but what does that mean? Biden has had a big lead in South Carolina. Is that gone? If not Biden, who wins the first heavily black influenced state? After that and another caucus in Nevada, the floodgate opens and we have 15 states on one day. So, the next few really does not work.

Your point about not looking at candidates in advance is well made. That's true clear up to November voting. Over and over we have seen significant movement in the last days prior to the election, obviously including 2016. The significance of Iowa and New Hampshire has always been in framing the candidates and the issues prior to the main mass of the voting.
 
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