POWER RANKING: Here's who has the best chance of becoming the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee
- The Democratic 2020 presidential field is set to be one of the largest, most competitive, and most unpredictable in modern history with 20 declared candidates so far.
- To help make sense of where all these candidates stand in the field, INSIDER has been conducting a recurring SurveyMonkey Audience national poll.
- We've combined INSIDER's polling and results of Morning Consult's daily survey of the 2020 Democratic primary in order to create a power ranking of declared and potential 2020 candidates.
- Here's what our power ranking looks like as of April 30, 2019.
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With 20 declared candidates in the race, the Democratic the 2020 presidential field is set to be one of the largest, most competitive, and most unpredictable in modern history.
To help make sense of where all these candidates stand in the field, INSIDER has been conducting a recurring SurveyMonkey Audience national poll. You can download every single poll here, down to the individual respondent data.
We choose not to focus on the overall percentage of Democratic voters that would be satisfied in the event a candidate became the nominee. Instead, we're looking for conditional probability: given that a voter likes Candidate A, how often do they like Candidate B, and how is that different than Candidate B's overall performance.
Read more about how the INSIDER 2020 Democratic primary tracker works.
At this point in the race, we're mainly interested in using our polling to figure out:
- What percentage of Democratic voters are familiar with each candidate in the first place.
- How Democrats rate each candidate's chances of beating President Donald Trump in a general election match-up.
- If a given candidate were to drop out of the race, who their supporters would flock to next.
We've combined INSIDER's polling and results of Morning Consult's daily survey of the 2020 Democratic primary in order to create a power ranking of declared and potential 2020 candidates.
These rankings will be subject to change as we get new information, but at this stage in the cycle, we're mainly interested in how a candidate's name is resonating and how many voters think they can beat Trump.
Here's what our ranking looks like as of April 30, 2019.
23: Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam.
Messam, who announced on March 28, isn't registering in Morning Consult's polling yet and will have an uphill battle attracting voters and donors as such a late entry into the field with very limited name recognition.
More importantly, it seems like his campaign is already falling apart at the seams just weeks after its official launch. According to a recent report in the Miami New Times, several campaign staffers have already quit after the campaign couldn't make payroll.
The campaign subsequent recently sent a memo, obtained by the New Times, informing remaining staff that Messam's wife Angela has "consolidated all of the financial and banking assets of the campaign under her exclusive control" and is "refusing to issue paychecks."
22: Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton.
Moulton, who became the 19th Democrat to enter the primary on April 22, isn't registering on Morning Consult's radar yet.
Because of his low name recognition as a third-term congressman and his very recent entry into the race, we're placing him at the back of the pack for now until we get more information about his performance compared to the rest of the field.
21: California Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Swalwell, a 38-year-old three-term congressman from California, just entered the race on April 8, and isn't registering yet on Morning Consult polling.
Swalwell has scant name recognition and is mainly known for his involvement in the Trump-Russia probes as a member of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees.
While Swalwell isn't basing his campaign around the Trump-Russia probe, it doesn't appear to be a promising path to the presidency when it comes to issues voters care about.
Even though Swalwell is pitching himself as the gun control candidate, that approach may be met with mixed effect and leaves him open to the risk of betting his candidacy on a non-politically salient issue.
Read more about Eric Swalwell's campaign.
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