WaPo: Where the Democratic primary race stands after the first debate

[Kind of Blue]

The Post-ABC News poll (29 percent), the Emerson poll (30 percent ) and the Morning Consult poll (31 percent) all show former vice president Joe Biden dropping a significant amount yet still in first place. In early states, Biden lost 12 points compared with 7 points overall in the Morning Consult survey.

Morning Consult shows Biden has lost 8 points among African Americans, but not all of his support went to Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.). After the debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also gained slightly (4 percent) with African American voters in that same poll.

In face-to-face match-ups against President Trump, Biden does the best of any Democrat and consistently scores outside the margin of error. Sanders recently has come in slightly above Trump (a shade over 4 percent in the RCP averages), but often within the margin of error. Harris and Warren are about 2 points ahead of Trump in the RCP averages (again within the margin of error).

We have several takeaways from all of this.

First, it’s clear that Biden’s support was in fact fragile, as the first significant event in the contest, the debate, demonstrated. His draw, however, has been in large part premised on his ability to beat Trump; if he continues to do a whole lot better against Trump than the other contenders, that advantage will remain...

Fifth, the past few weeks should underscore how unstable the race is and how early we are in the primary. We will see five more debates before the end of the year alone. We are still learning a whole lot about the candidates’ backgrounds and records, and none has started a concerted attack on any other participant...

Finally, we’ve seen a dramatic demonstration of how critical the black vote is in the Democratic primary. As we saw in 2008, a front-runner with strong African American support can tumble if those voters find a viable African American contender, as they did with Barack Obama after his Iowa victory. The support of African American voters — as Obama had in 2008 and Hillary Clinton had in 2016 — can be absolutely critical, if not determine the outcome. And that, in turn, points to a failure in media coverage: Rather than trace the whims of mostly white, super-progressive voters, the media should be paying a whole lot more attention to African American voters. It’s they who will likely pick the nominee, and in turn, determine whether Democrats can field a winning candidate to boot out Trump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/09/where-democratic-primary-race-stands-after-first-debate/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.df61eef54ec3

[BlueWI]

1. Good analysis. eom

[Kind of Blue]

2. Yeah, I do appreciate those with as much analysis as possible.