Hats in the Ring

Just a quick update today to show the Tracker standings after a couple of new polls.  As expected, Biden is seeing an uptick in poll numbers following his official entry into the race last week. What I find at least as interesting however is that we're also seeing some positive poll movement for Elizabeth Warren.  This together with her solid fundraising numbers earlier this month are putting her on an upward trajectory.  Will this turn into, dare we say, a surge?  I'm not expecting anything on the order of Buttigieg's jump, simply because Warren is already well known.  But it may be that her array of solid policy proposals is starting to make an impression on the electorate.  She just got a solid 8% in New Hampshire  along with 8% and 9% in the most recent national polls . Model Scoring Explained Warren's performance in all three of those polls mentioned above is ahead of Harris.  We could be seeing her mentioned in the same breath...

Just a quick update today along with some thoughts on how I might modify polling data at some point in the future. (Hello there Eric Swalwell, you're now in the Tracker!)  We've had a nice spread of updates across most of the data inputs: new national and early state polls, an update to CNN's power rankings, some new endorsements, and of course the ever changing betting market.  Biden, Sanders, and Buttigieg all got improved poll numbers this week.  Warren and O'Rourke are jockeying for position behind Buttigieg.  Otherwise things are pretty much status quo. Model Scoring Explanation So, now that I've been following these numbers for a couple of months, I'm feeling more dissatisfied with the model's overall ability to capture the current state of the race (which as I've said before is my primary goal, this isn't about forecasting).  I'm mainly unsatisfied with simply taking the polling data at face value.  We all know that this earl...

Now that campaign finances have been incorporated into this Primary Tracker model , we have a more complete picture of where the candidates stand after the initial quarter of serious campaigning.  Along with some minor updates including the Washington Post's latest power rankings , today's Tracker offers a chance to reassess how the candidates currently sort into tiers.  I last offered some thoughts on tiers back on the first of this month, when I was in more of a splitter mood and grouped the candidates into 5 groups.  Let's see how they shake out now.  First, the graph: I think the fundraising numbers have helped shift the candidates into some clear groups of contenders and pretenders, at least at this early stage.  In Tier 1 you have the clear Frontrunners - Biden and Sanders.  It's true that a good portion of their status is still driven by high name recognition, but we can't ignore Biden's consistently high poll numbers in both national and early...

Now that 2019 First Quarter fundraising reporting is in the books, I wanted to add campaign finance data to the Primary Tracker model.  At this stage in the campaign, fundraising is probably the single most important measure of a candidate's strength and ability to endure in the primary race.  Candidates who haven't raised at least a few million dollars at this stage are in danger of running on fumes before we get through the summer debate season. The most important fundraising metric is of course total dollars raised, so that's obviously going into the model.  Beyond that, I wanted to capture a measure of a candidate's breadth of support.  I was planning on using the number of individual donors for each candidate, but that number is not included in the FEC first quarter reporting summaries .  The FEC filings do break out donations into some useful categories:  total dollars from small individual donations (up to $200), total dollars from large individual...

I was starting to think we might be entering a lull in the campaign season this week.  The frenzy of launch season is winding down and there have been few polls and no new endorsements over the last week or two.  Certainly over the next year-plus we can expect an ebb and flow in campaign activities that result in meaningful changes to candidate status.  But then we got an interesting poll from New Hampshire last night, followed by CNN updating their monthly candidate rankings this morning.  Pete Buttigieg was the prime beneficiary in both cases, earning third place with 11% in New Hampshire, and jumping up to fifth in CNN's rankings.  As a result, his trend line still resembles the launch phase of an ICBM: Buttigieg is now even with O'Rourke and possibly heading for Tier 1 territory (depending on whether you're a lumper or splitter I guess).  Now to be clear, only the New Hampshire poll is what I would consider fresh new information here.  The C...

Since Friday's update we've had a poll in South Carolina and a couple of national polls.  There are no dramatic takeaways, but it is notable that Biden is maintaining solid numbers in the national polls, suggesting that voters are not making too much of his "personal space" issues.  Here's the table: Model Inputs Explanation Model Scoring Explanation Biden's national polling average is actually up a bit from last week, the latest polls have him in the 30s both nationally and in South Carolina.  This is starting to look like more than just name recognition - Biden seems to be the solid preference of a large segment of Democratic voters. Other items of note:  Buttigieg continues his surge, getting improved numbers in the polls to go with his betting hype.  Speaking of the betting market, Gabbard is getting some love there that's hard to explain.  I haven't seen anything in the headlines to suggest her stature has improved of late.  We'll k...

Greetings and Happy Friday.  I waited a day from my usual schedule due to a relatively quiet week on the data front, but the Washington Post's latest power rankings are hot off the presses, so it's time for an update.  Otherwise there are no changes to polls or endorsements since Monday's update (the PredictIt betting market is always on the move).  Here's the table: Model Inputs Explanation Model Scoring Explanation The Post dropped Biden from first to third in their ranking on the heels of his personal space issues.  Meanwhile his betting stock has recovered a bit from the drop to 17¢ we saw Monday (The lowest I saw it this week was 16 I believe), but still behind his high of 26¢ we saw a few weeks ago.  There hasn't been enough polling this week to see any effect on that front.  On to the graph: Biden has definitely seen a dip over the past week or so, but maintains his lead over the field.  Meanwhile Buttigieg is holding his booste...

It's only been a few days since I presented the first results from the 2020 ratings model, but we've already had some new information come in.  First, the table. Model Inputs Explanation Model Scoring Explanation We have a new early state poll from Nevada , the first one from the Silver State I've seen since I started building the model in January.  For the most part it tracks with other polling, with a few notables.  Buttigieg and Yang both show up in this poll at five and three percent respectively, which seems to further establish their credibility as contenders.  Also of note, Hickenlooper and Inslee got no votes (or at least not enough to round to 1%), which doesn't bode well for either of these western governors.  Meanwhile, the PredictIt betting market is already reflecting some angst for the Biden campaign, after some accusations of the #MeToo genre came out late last week -- Biden's stock has dropped from 20¢ on Friday to 17¢ this morning. ...