DU Primaries Report, May 2019: Steady As She Goes

[EarlG]

Last edited Fri May 31, 2019, 05:02 PM - Edit history (1)

Last month we launched our inaugural monthly Primaries Report, based on the ongoing candidate preferences of DU members right here in the Democratic Primaries forum. (If you missed it, and would like a bit of insight into the Candidate Rankings board, please visit that thread.)

As a quick reminder:

• On the Candidate Rankings board, the 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%.


• The exception to this is candidates below 0.5% -- they are still displayed at 1% (to indicate that they have at least some support on DU). There are currently no candidates with zero supporters.


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

Where the candidates stand this month

The situation at the end of April was somewhat volatile. There had been a relatively significant amount of movement among the candidates as Undecided dropped by almost 8 percentage points over the month, and DU members switched support from candidate to candidate as a number of newsworthy events occured -- Warren becoming the first candidate to call for Trump's impeachment, the Buttigieg surge (Butti... gurge?), and Biden officially entering the race.

In contrast, the keyword for this month is stable -- or at least, mostly stable. Okay then, the TWO keywords for this month are mostly and stable. Here's the all-time graph so far, which shows how an initially bumpy ride in April has smoothed out quite a bit in May.

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



Let's take a look a May's thrilling graph all by itself. Stand by to have your world rocked...

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



Exciting stuff, huh? But let's take a closer look.

The first thing that supporters of Amy Klobuchar may notice is that unfortunately she is no longer in the mix, having dropped below the 1% threshold during May. This is not because her supporters abandoned her, but because she did not pick up any new supporters. (Bear in mind that the number of candidate preferences increases daily, as more DU members opt to participate. Therefore candidates who merely tread water and do not gradually increase their raw number of supporters over time will see their percentage of support slowly decline. Such was the case with Sen. Klobuchar this month.)

Meanwhile, after taking a steep dive during April, Undecided has held very steady throughout May, declining less than 1 percentage point from 40.30% at the beginning of May to 39.68% today. (That said, 39.68% is the lowest percentage recorded for Undecided so far).

Now let's remove Undecided from the graph so we can get a better look at the candidates.

The big stories

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



There are three big stories this month. First, Joe Biden continues to pull away from the pack, his support on DU reflecting his front-runner status in real-world polls. After an initial 2-plus percentage point leap following his official announcement, Biden has so far shown no signs of slowing, gradually increasing his support week after week. Starting May at 13.81%, Biden now sits at a comfortable 14.63%, a mark not achieved since Kamala Harris's 14.73% all the way back on March 25.

Second, Pete Buttigieg's remarkable hot streak through the latter part of April cooled off significantly during May from a high of 11.57% on April 19 to a low of 8.04% on May 24, although it looks like his fortunes could be improving as his support has started to pick up again over the past week. This month's slide aside, Mayor Pete's journey from an initial 3.82% back in March to a steady-looking 8.11% today shows that he still has staying power and clearly deserves a place in the top tier.

Third, after a somewhat shaky start, Elizabeth Warren is now ascendant. (Can we call this the Warrenaissance?) Warren stands today at 10.73%, where she appears poised to deprive Kamala Harris of second place at any moment. While Warren and Harris still trail Joe Biden by a pretty big margin in terms of raw support, Warren's percentage of support is actually increasing faster than Biden's. Starting May at 9.60%, her support has increased by more than 1 percentage point over the past month, and Warren is close to doubling the percentage of support she began with back in March. That said, she still has a ways to go in terms of raw support if she wants to dethrone Biden.

Elsewhere

As mentioned, Kamala Harris is now in danger of slipping into third place for the first time. Her level of support has been somewhat perplexing -- after a long downward bounce throughout April she started to pick up steam again at the start of May (likely due to her strong performance at the Bill Barr Senate hearing) only for her support to deflate somewhat as the month went by. That said, she appears to be holding steady, and still has strong support on DU as one of the clear top three candidates. From a May high of 11.19% on the 10th, Harris sits at 10.86%.

Rounding out the top five, Bernie Sanders' level of support remains remarkably stable. Day to day, Sanders rarely loses supporters, but he only seems to pick up enough additional supporters to keep him hovering around the same percentage. Beginning the month at 7.94%, Sanders is currently perched at 7.71%. His support has never risen above 8.13% -- but has never dropped below 7.63%.

Finally, Beto O'Rourke and Jay Inslee are suffering from the same problem as Amy Klobuchar -- they are not picking up enough new supporters to remain buoyant, and their percentage of support has been gradually slipping since the beginning of March (O'Rourke's somewhat more dramatically). O'Rourke started the month on 2.72% and ends it on 2.44%, whereas Inslee began at 1.99% and ends at 1.97%.

So what does all this mean?

Honestly? Hell if I know. Dammit Jim, I'm a forum administrator, not a statistician!

Next month's predictions

At least one pair of candidates appears to be on the verge of switching places on the Candidate Rankings board, and by the end of June we should start to get an idea of how the first Democratic debates, scheduled for June 26 and 27, are going to affect the race. (Our report for next month will fall on June 28.) That said, we don't expect the race to change much over the next 30 days -- barring any unforeseen events, of course. The likelihood of such an event? Hell if I know. Dammit Jim, I'm a forum administrator, not a psychic!

Thanks for reading.

[Dennis Donovan]

1. Thank you for the explanation!

[KY_EnviroGuy]

2. K&R. Thanks for keeping that database and preparing the graphs.

.............

[JDC]

3. KR

[Left-over]

4. Thank you for this report.

I am supporting whomever the Democrat nominee is going to be.

[Hortensis]

5. Seems like we should expect another swiftboat attack

on Biden before too long, having failed to smear him as a sexual predator/child molester and gotten little effect so far from hitting his well-known record.

I have no idea of optimal timing of these attacks, though. The first debate is June 26-27, so enough before for it to dominate coverage for a typical 6-7 day period, right before, after? One-two punches?

[FakeNoose]

12. Don't give them ideas

They're trying like hell to build up Bernie and Tulsi Gabbard, but it's not gonna work. The Repukes don't have to start attacking Biden until early next year, so they've still got lots of time. It's much more fun to make Nancy Pelosi videos anyway.

[SergeStorms]

6. Great work!

Nice to see the Trekkie humor placed in strategic spots as well.

[Shrek]

7. Any plans to complete the candidate preference page?

Several candidates are missing.

[EarlG]

15. Yes, with a but...

So the original list we created was somewhat arbitrary. I believe we had 14 candidates to begin with. We decided that we would then add additional candidates if we got a request from at least one member who wanted to support that candidate. Using that criteria, we added an additional three candidates fairly early on.

We are obviously aware that more candidates have joined the race since then, and people have asked us if we're going to add more for the sake of completeness, but so far I don't believe anybody has asked us to add a new candidate specifically so that they can support that candidate.

Therefore we were a bit hesitant to complete the list, because it looked like we'd end up with a number of candidates who would have zero supporters, and it just seemed a bit pointless to add them.

Having said that, we have recently discussed the merits of adding them anyway just so we can have a complete list, and I daresay we will get around to doing that soon.

[LiberalLovinLug]

20. Yes, why isn't Tulsi Gabbard shown?

She, as of now, has reached both the 1% support and the funding threshold (which is amazing she did it with small grassroot donations). I can't wait to hear her. I hope she is given enough time to speak.

[BigmanPigman]

8. Well done!

Thanks!

[Kurt V.]

9. great stuff. thank you. nt

[Scurrilous]

10. Nice graph work.

[MicaelS]

11. Fantastic.

Seeing it on a graph makes it much easier for me.

[grantcart]

13. Very useful

[yardwork]

14. To me, the most interesting trend is Warren's.

I first picked Warren as my candidate, then switched to Biden. Honestly, I see Warren picking up supporters and I think that's great. The DU trend matches a national trend. Warren's pro-consumer messages resonate.

[EarlG]

16. It is interesting

Warren always seemed to have a solid base of support on DU, while also appearing to be a not-quite top tier candidate. You can see how she hovered right around the 6% mark for a full month as other candidates bounced up and down, particularly Pete Buttigieg and his giant leap in mid-April.

She started to climb after becoming the first candidate to call for Trump's impeachment (check out the date here), and I expected a bounce but assumed she would drop again. Instead, she kept climbing, and since then she and Mayor Pete have really experienced something of a reversal of fortune. You can see how her rise almost exactly mirrors his slide.

[yardwork]

18. Yes, I see the same.

[marble falls]

17. Truly enjoyed that and actually learned new stuff. Another good day on DU!

[argyl]

19. Excellent analysis.

I'm looking for Mayor Pete's numbers to increase after the first debate; an uptick here on DU and maybe dramatically with the overall public.