There's A Better Case For A Top 2 Than A Top 3

[brooklynite]

Before last week’s debate, I argued that there was a lot of ambiguity as to who belonged in the top tier in the Democratic primary. Depending on which factors you emphasized, the top group could plausibly consist of any number of candidates from one (Joe Biden) to five (Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg).

The Houston debate didn’t upend the campaign overnight; polls since the debate don’t show huge movement. You can, of course, find big swings for individual candidates in individual polls if you’re willing to cherry-pick, but you shouldn’t do that.

The post-debate polls do, however, reinforce some trends that were already in the works before:
- They tend to argue for the presence of a top two (Biden and Warren) as opposed to a top three (Biden, Warren and Sanders), especially if you look at polls of Iowa.
- They make it awfully hard to argue that Harris belongs in the top tier. (I recently argued that Harris did belong in the top tier, so put that take in the “didn’t age well” bucket, at least for now.)

Meanwhile, a new trend since the debate is that several of the lower-tier candidates, such as Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke, are showing slightly livelier numbers, although we’re still only talking the low-to-mid single digits.

[Bayard]

1. I SO wish we could have a Biden/Warren ticket

They should work out their differences for the good of the country. That would be an unbeatable ticket. Complement each other.

[UncleNoel]

2. I cud go for Biden/Warren

But Biden would want a VP on his page with health care, wouldn't he? He has said he wants a woman of color who agress with him on the issues. My first choice was Harris as VP and I still have a hope for that.

[NYMinute]

5. Warren's MFA is a HUGE liability politically

If the voters only came from DailyKOS and DU, such a pick would make sense.

However, there is a big moderate world out there.

[thesquanderer]

3. Also worth considering: A relatively small % of the voting pop watched the debate.

So if the polls are representative of the population, than a relatively small percentage of people polled watched the debates. Which is why probably NONE of the debates have had enormous poll consequences. Harris got her post-debate bump after the Biden attack, but that was because that moment was newsworthy enough that it made all the papers, news reports, talk shows, etc. There was no such moment coming out of Houston, except maybe a negative one for Castro, but he was already so low that there wasn't a lot of room to move much further down. I mean, if he lost half his support, he'd drop from 2% to 1%? Hardly a blip in overall results.

[qazplm135]

4. no, there isn't

if we went by polling in the late summer/early fall, we'd still be talking about the epic 2008 presidential battle between Giuliani and Clinton.

[NYMinute]

6. I think Sanders should drop out

He has no chance of winning the nomination.

[nsd]

7. Link

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/theres-a-better-case-for-a-top-2-than-a-top-3/

[Gothmog]

8. Good article by Nate