DU Primaries Report, June 2019: Warren Takes Charge

[EarlG]

Last edited Fri Jun 28, 2019, 04:09 PM - Edit history (2)

Welcome to the third monthly DU Primaries Report, based on the ongoing candidate preferences of DU members right here in the Democratic Primaries forum!

How the Candidate Rankings board works:

• Displayed percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number, so a candidate displayed at (for example) 10% will have an actual percentage in the range of 9.50% to 10.49%.


• Candidates below 0.5% are displayed at 0%. Candidates with no supporters at all are marked with a dash.


• For the purposes of the DU Primaries Report, only candidates who have an actual percentage of at least 1% are included.

Previously on the DU Primaries Report

May 2019: Steady As She Goes
April 2019: Let's Get This Party Started!

Where the candidates stand this month

If last month's keyword was "stable," this month's keyword is "OMG, who strapped that rocket booster to Elizabeth Warren?"

Candidates above 1% actual support, excluding Undecided, June 2019



Warren was the true star on DU in the month of June. Ending May in third place with 10.73% support, just a fraction behind Kamala Harris, Warren quickly shot into second place on June 3, before blasting past Joe Biden and into first place on June 17. Since then her climb has remained steady, and she now resides comfortably in first place with 16.21% -- a meteoric rise indeed. Warren currently holds the highest level of support of any candidate since we began keeping track of these stats on March 22.

From where did Warren draw her support? Let's check the graph for June with Undecideds included:

Candidates above 1% actual support, including Undecided, June 2019



While the total number of members joining the Democratic Primaries forum jumped up by about 5% during June, the percentage of Undecideds decreased by 2.3 percentage points from 39.49% on June 3 to 37.19% today -- a new record low for Undecided support. This implies that Warren's rise was fueled largely by DU members getting into the Primaries forum and expressing their support for the first time, along with Undecideds switching to Warren.

The bigger picture

That's not the entire story though, as a look at the all-time graph will show us.

Candidates above 1% actual support, excluding Undecided, all-time



Clearly, there has been a large contingent of support for Joe Biden on DU since he officially announced his candidacy at the end of April. Biden remained strong and stable throughout May and June, weathering a number of real-world political difficulties, starting May at 13.81% and ending June at 13.83%. However, his percentage of support has been in slow decline ever since reaching a peak of 14.63% on May 31. The total number of Biden's supporters has not decreased -- he has simply not added enough new supporters during June to keep his percentage of support afloat.

As Biden represents the more, dare I say, establishment wing of the party, it's not surprising that many DUers have been searching for an alternative. Bernie Sanders has not caught fire the way he did in 2016, most likely because he is not the only alternative this time around (starting at 7.63% on March 22 he remains at 7.46% today with very little fluctuation). Pete Buttigieg looked like he could be the one for a while, peaking in second place at 11.57% on April 19, but it's been a long slow slide since then as he dipped below Sanders at the end of June to finish in fifth place at 7.31%.

These factors seem very much to have assisted Warren as the "non-Biden" choice, with some DUers moving to her from Sanders and particularly Buttigieg.

While the slow fall of Kamala Harris throughout May mirrored the slow rise of Biden, interestingly his drop in support throughout June does not seem to have brought her numbers back up, implying that there was also some movement from Biden to Warren. Harris remains comfortably in third place, but her percentage of support maintains its overall slow and steady decline from 10.91% at the beginning of June to 9.94% today. That said, her performance at last night's debate could swing things in her favor again, and if Biden drops, Harris will likely be the biggest beneficiary.

That debate thing

I think we may still be too close to the debates to properly log any changes in opinion -- these things usually take a day or two to shake out as the media declares winners and losers and the spin machines go into overdrive. Nevertheless, the graph may have started to indicate movement for a couple of candidates. Biden took a 0.34 percentage point dip over the past week, Buttigieg was down 0.32, and Beto O'Rourke slid 0.24. Time will tell if these dips are significant, or merely temporary.

The debates may also have made a small difference for some of the lower-tier candidates. Julian Castro and Amy Klobuchar saw nice little bumps (Steve Bullock also picked up some new support this week despite not being in the debates), while Tulsi Gabbard, Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang all climbed ever so slightly. John Hickenlooper saw a small decline. And despite being declared one of the stronger candidates in the first debate, Cory Booker's level of support did not change. All of these candidates remain below 1% actual support, mind you.

Last month's predictions

Last month I predicted that at least one pair of candidates would switch places (I was right!), but that overall the race wouldn't change much over the next 30 days (I was very wrong!).

Next month's predictions

Here's something fun:

Candidates above 1% actual support, excluding Undecided, polynomial trendlines



What does it mean? Hell if I know! I'm not Nate Silver.

That won't stop me from making some predictions. I think Elizabeth Warren has to peak at some point in July, but that doesn't mean she's going to to be giving up the number one spot any time soon. Expect her to remain very strong throughout the next month. Based on the positive coverage Kamala Harris got for her debate performance, I'd say she's injected some fresh life into her campaign and I wouldn't be surprised to see her start climbing again, particularly if she continues to mix it up with Joe Biden. If she ultimately gets the better of him, we may start to see signs of his vulnerability in July.

We'll be back with a another report on Monday, July 29 -- thanks for reading!

[Shell_Seas]

1. Why doesn't this show the other candidates?

[DonViejo]

2. Do you think this statement has anything to do with that reasoning...

For the purposes of the DU Primaries Report, only candidates who have an actual percentage of at least 1% are included.

[DownriverDem]

14. DU is not the country

Too many folks here seem to forget that. The country is not as far left as many here. We need a candidate that can win the Electoral College which means winning state by state. We need to focus on winning in November.

[DonViejo]

15. Thanks for the lecture.

[Takket]

16. What is your point? DU is not the country, but the actual poll is DU

[EarlG]

3. Adding them to the graphs is not very informative

Here's what the all-time graph looks like (Gravel and de Blasio do have at least one supporter each on DU, but are not included on this graph because I hadn't added them yet):

[George II]

4. Can we get raw number, like how many people have actually participated so far? These %s can...

...be from 100 people, 1,000 people, or 10,000 people.

[bluewater]

5. K&R

Thanks for all the info!

[thesquanderer]

6. Nice report but maybe better to have waited a day or two

for the true end-of-june numbers. It's possible that people influenced by last night's debate might not have yet had the opportunity to update their preferences.

[EarlG]

7. I understand

I'm trying to keep to my schedule though, I'm logging the numbers on Mondays and Fridays, and I said I would do a report on the last Monday or Friday of the month (whichever comes last).

So we'll see how the debate affected everyone's numbers throughout July at the next report (which will fall one day before the next round of debates, by the way).

[Lucid Dreamer]

12. Nice job, Earl. Thanx.

I'm glad to see someone take the time to do this.

I spent much of my life flogging databases. I used to see patterns and would publish graphs or tables for those I thought might care. Then they would start expecting updates periodically, like weekly or even daily.

I had a new philosophy about making public my private knowledge about stats: Never publish a report once if you don't want to do it forever.

Still, accept my appreciation. No further expectations or demands.

[cwydro]

18. I think if anything that Warren's numbers will continue to climb.

Thanks for all this work!

[thesquanderer]

19. ...and it looks like they didn't change over the next coupla' days anyway! (nt)

[FakeNoose]

8. Another thing to consider is fundraising

Which candidates can raise enough money to keep this up for another 12 months? That will narrow down the field more than anything else.

Biden and Warren are in the best shape. Sanders is losing financial support (I believe) but maybe not voters (yet). The others don't necessarily want to tell us how much they're raising, but it's going to make a big difference in who's left standing by the time the primaries start up.

It's going to be a long 12 months.

[cp]

9. Thank you for your work, EarlG!

Very much appreciated.

[Midwestocrat]

10. "The Bullock Bump!"

If only the two-term Attorney General, two-term Governor of conservative red-state Montana (that does occasionally choose Democrats: Clinton for Prez '92, Baucus, Schweitzer, Tester) could have been on the debate stage instead of, oh I don't know, Williamson or Yang...

[LovingA2andMI]

11. YES!!!!

Go Elizabeth Warren GO! #KeepRisingToTheTop

[Eustace is Useful]

13. Primaries?

What primaries? They won't be starting till winter! (I think it important that we not get ahead of ourselves this time.)

[cwydro]

17. K and r.