Analysis: Many Democrats are misreading 2016 to assume that Biden is their best chance in 2020
Joe Biden greets audience members May 1 during a rally in Iowa City. By Philip Bump Philip Bump National correspondent focused largely on the numbers behind politics Email Bio Follow May 6 at 1:31 PM In the past two weeks, there’s been a divergence in the Democratic presidential primary field. Former vice president Joe Biden has surged in recent polling while Sen. Bernie Sanders has seen his support slacken.
The CNN poll asked Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents exactly what traits they thought were most important in a candidate. More than 90 percent said that electability was at least a very important trait. Nearly half said it was extremely important. Last week we pointed out the flaws in this sort of projection. The best example of how iffy “electability” forecasting can be came in September 2011. At that point, former Texas governor Rick Perry was riding high in the polls and was seen as the most electable Republican candidate by a wide margin in Washington Post-ABC News polling. One disastrous debate performance later, his support and the perception of his electability plunged.
The only place where Biden had a marked advantage was among independents. So did Trump in 2016, then going on to lose the popular vote. So did Mitt Romney in 2012. Harris offered an effective and accurate argument rebutting this version of 2020 in a speech Sunday night. This is a broadly underappreciated point. In 2016, millions of people who’d cast a ballot for Barack Obama in 2012 ended up not voting. Over a third of them, according to research published last year, were black.
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