538: If You're Polling In The Low Single Digits, You're Probably Toast

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Yesterday, I wrote about the middle and upper echelons of the Democratic field: those candidates who are polling in the mid-single-digits or higher. You can certainly posit a rough order of which of these candidates are more likely to win the nomination. I’d much rather wager a few shekels on Joe Biden than Pete Buttigieg, for instance. But I don’t think there’s any hard-and-fast distinction between the top tier and the next-runners-up.

For candidates outside of that group — those polling in the low single digits, or worse — I have less-welcome news. I don’t really care which order you place them in, because unless they turn it around soon, they’re probably toast.

In this article, I’m mostly referring to Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Julián Castro and Amy Klobuchar, who I’ll refer to as the BOCK candidates (Booker/O’Rourke/Castro/Klobuchar) for short. Some of this also applies to candidates (e.g. Michael Bennet) who didn’t make this week’s debate at all, although they’re in even worse shape. I’m not counting Andrew Yang as part of this group, however. He’s actually polling slightly better than the BOCKs, despite lower name recognition, and is more of a sui generis case.

Subjectively speaking, the BOCK group is a reasonably interesting and well-qualified set of candidates. At times, I’ve thought various members of this group were poised for a breakout. (I also thought some of them, such as Klobuchar, would come out of the gate stronger when they initially launched their campaigns.) If you fast-forwarded to next July and one of these candidates — Booker, say — was accepting the Democratic nomination in Milwaukee, it wouldn’t be that surprising on some level. They have the sort of profile that resembles those of past presidential nominees.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/if-youre-polling-in-the-low-single-digits-youre-probably-toast/