After Iowa and so many good New Hampshire polls for Sanders, it is about time to present my prediction for the 2020 presidential election before it is no longer an interesting take. I try to only write about such matters when I think the mainstream opinion is wrong and the published opinion is wrong about Sanders' electability.
Full disclose: I hope Sanders or Warren wins, the biggest problem America faces is crony capitalism. Systemic corruption is the foundation of nearly all US problems, which spill into the world, including insufficient climate action. Given this bias I will try to quantify as much as possible and give my sources.
Unfortunately it is not guaranteed Sanders will win and it is hard to quantify, but to go on the record with a clear prediction, let me state he has a chance of 54% of winning. This is based on a chance to win the primary of 60% and then a chance of 90% to win the general. This makes it a probabilistic prediction, just like "there is a 70% probability it will rain tomorrow", which needs multiple predictions to validate. For validation, you could combine it with my previous political predictions going against the mainstream:
1. I already have my warning for clear and present danger before the 2016 election: "there is now a real possibility Trump could become president". In the post you will find the reasons why the terrible pundits in the US media were wrong.
2. Another prediction was that the UK election in 2017 would be a lot closer than poll whisperer Nate Silver predicted because he ignored comrade trend. (Although he is an incompetent establishment pundit, but really good with numbers, so this was an interesting prediction.)
I am confident that Sanders will win an election against Trump (90%), but even if it looks good now winning the primary (60%) is harder because TV news keeps on repeating that Sanders cannot win the general election, as far as I have seen mostly without arguments and sometimes with very cherry picked or hacky evidence.
The power is shifting from corporate media to social media, independent media and membership supported media. The media and candidates can no longer be sure to get away with misinformation without risking their reputation. Although sometimes they slip into old patterns and claim that they said X in 1976 and I am shouting at my monitor that everyone has seen the video of you saying Y.
The power is also shifting from big donors to crowd funding. Even in the face of rising inequality, technology has made small donations so easy as to be competitive. Fortunately to spread the truth you also need less money than to spread lies and presidential candidates get a lot of free media.
As moving target it is hard to say how much difference this power shift makes in 2020, we can be sure the donor class and the media will throw the kitchen sink at Sanders. They hurt themselves doing so, but they despise him from their corporate core to their high-dollar hosts and guests. So I am not as confident about my primary prediction, not knowing how this will play out.
Sanders Beats Trump
The media is sure Sanders cannot win because Republicans would call him a socialist. One often has the impression that they and the Democratic leadership think you are not allowed to reply when Republicans say something. At every primary debate Sanders thus gets his socialism question, gives a strong answer, which the journalists apparently have forgotten again in the next debate. Maybe they are trying to train us into also thinking that Democratic leadership would like Sanders to cower, just like them, to be weak, to defend themselves against the unfair accusation of being a socialist with some soft spoken words. But if you are defending you are losing. It is much stronger to accept the label and fill it with content.
Is there a better campaign than replying and telling the American people about the high quality of living in social democratic countries, about the higher salaries for workers, about their vibrant market economies, about their high ranking in global indices for entrepreneurship and freedom, about their well-trained competitive work forces, about being treated with respect, about a government that works for all and not just for the donors? Even Danish politicians have started helping:
So what is the quantitative evidence whether Sanders or Biden is the stronger candidate?
Policies
1. The policies of Sanders are the most popular ones. This is already clear by most presidential candidates adopting or claiming to adopt the most popular Sanders policies. To be fair the difference with Biden, on average over all policies, is just one percent, but does not go in the direction the pundits would like you to think:"Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont edges out his Democratic opponents on health care, immigration, the environment and the economy, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. ... For health care, arguably Sanders' staple issue, the Senator claims 27.1 percent support, eclipsing Biden and Warren by 9 percent and 14.6 percent, respectively. On the environment, Sanders again edges out Biden by 9.7 percent and Warren by 8.2 percent. He also comes out ahead on the economy and jobs."This week's Quinnipiac University poll asked Democrat and Democrat-leaning voters: "Regardless of how you intend to vote in the Democratic primary for president, which candidate do you think - has the best policy ideas?" Sanders was the choice of 27%, Warren of 16% and Biden of 14%. The voting intentions from the same poll, are 25%, 14% and 17%, respectively, which are higher for Biden than the policy support and lower for Sanders. This suggests that many people unfortunately plan on voting for a candidate they agree with less because they believe the media on electability.
Money and enthusiasm
2. Biden is losing the Money Primary. In the fourth quarter of 2019 he was 3rd with respect to donations. (In the 3rd quarter he was only 4th.)In the fourth quarter Sanders had 1.8 million individual donors, while Biden had only half a million donors. This is a sign of enthusiasm. Just as the 10 million calls to voters made by Sanders volunteers.
The number of donors. Sanders is leading in 46 states. Graphic: The New York Times.
Electability according to the markets
3. The betting market PredictIt finds it most likely that Sanders will win the primary. The graph below shows the price of shares for Sanders winning, which are equal to the predicted probability he will win in percent. Sanders has a probability of 45% of winning the primary and another betting market gives him a 29% probability of winning the presidency.
The betting market PredictIt for the Democratic primary over last 90 days. The price of stocks in cent is the percentage change a candidate will win the primary.
Following Bayesian statistics, the probability of winning the presidency, P(presidency), is the probability of winning the primary, P(primary), times the probability of winning the presidency after having won the primary, P(presidency|primary). As an equation this reads:
P(presidency) = P(primary) x P(presidency|primary)
From this is follows that:
P(presidency|primary) = P(presidency) / P(primary)
The numbers for Sanders are:
P(presidency) / P(primary) = 29% / 45% = 64%
The probability of winning presidency if the nominee is thus 64% for Sanders. The same numbers for Biden are:
P(presidency|primary) = P(presidency) / P(primary) = 5% / 12% = 42%
So people willing to put money on their political assessment do not agree with the pundit class and see Sanders as 50% more electable than Biden.
To be fair, like the pundits, I also disagree with the betting market. They have a 54% chance of Trump winning. That is preposterous for a historically unpopular president, but betting against Big Money is a loosing strategy on the short term. One would have to hold the bet until election day to win and the chance of Trump winning is unfortunately not zero.
National head to head polling 2020
4. There is the simple polling of head to head races. According to a recent Survey USA poll, this is evidence favoring for Sanders.The poll found that 52 percent of voters would choose Sanders and 43 percent Trump, giving the veteran senator a nine-point lead. Next was former vice president Joe Biden at 50 percent to Trump's 43 percent, a seven-point lead.Looking back at older similar polls, the situation can also be reversed. On average I see no difference between the two candidates.
I personally do not like these head to head polls at this stage. Some candidates do quite poorly in head to head polls against Trump. If you look in detail, you will find that Trump gets about the same percentage against all candidates. What varies is how many people prefer the Democratic candidate or are undecided. My impression is that this is mostly measuring name recognition.
National head to head polling 2016
5. It is hard to imagine being in the situation of having the chose between X and Trump, the election is almost a year out and part of the supporters of candidate Y will say they do not know or would vote Trump during the primary, but in the end vote for their party.However, for 2016 we have similar polling closer to the date of the election. Biden is naturally not Clinton, but in May 2016 PolitiFact found that Sanders beat Trump more easily, by 3 to 12 percent points more than Clinton.
Just a few days before the election a Gravis poll showed that Clinton would beat Trump by 2%, while Sanders would beat Trump by 10%. Caveat: the questions seem neutral, but the poll was commissioned by a politician who endorsed Sanders.
While both Trump and Clinton had net negative favorability values, Sanders net favorability grew during the campaign as people got more familiar with his ideas and ended on plus 17% favorability.
Michael Bloomberg acknowledged these facts right after the 2016 election: “Bernie Sanders would have beaten Donald Trump. Polls show he would have walked away with it. But Hillary Clinton got the nomination.”
Head to head polling swing states
6. Swing states show another picture than the national polls. What the swing states are will depend on the candidate, but to avoid cherry picking, let's take the ones from the Cook Report. Their toss ups for the Electoral College are: Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Unfortunately all the head to head state polling we have are the averages of Real Clear Politics, which does not take the quality of the polls into account like 538 usually does. This makes manipulating the public opinion with bad polls easier.
| Biden vs Trump | Sanders vs Trump | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| State | Trump | Biden | Net | Trump | Sanders | Net |
| Arizona | 47.0 | 47.3 | +0.3 | 48.5 | 43.5 | -5.0 |
| Florida | 45.3 | 48.0 | +2.7 | 47.0 | 47.0 | Tie |
| North Carolina | 44.8 | 48.2 | +3.4 | 46.0 | 47.0 | +1.0 |
| Pennsylvania | 43.3 | 50.3 | +7.0 | 44.3 | 48.0 | +3.7 |
| Wisconsin | 43.3 | 47.0 | +3.7 | 44.7 | 46.7 | +2.0 |
| Average | 44.7 | 48.2 | +3.5 | 46.1 | 46.4 | +0.3 |
Here Biden has a small advantage. Also Sanders would win most swing states, but with less of a margin according to these polls.
Personality
7. Sanders is personally very popular with Democrats and Americans. For example asking "which candidate do you think - cares the most about people like you?" 24% reply Sanders and 19% Biden, in a Quinnipiac University poll.Asking which candidate is more honest in the same poll, 25% reply Sanders and 14% Biden. Thus Americans do not agree with political insiders and TV pundits who clearly dislike Sanders. Their dislike has a good reason, he would upend their corrupt self-dealing system.
Summary of the evidence
These are the more or less objective pieces of data we have, the rest is more political judgement. So let's summarize the evidence.When it comes to policies Sanders is more popular. The money primary shows the money and enthusiasm is with Sanders. Looking at what betting markets expect to happen Sanders is more electable. And Americans see Sanders as some who cares about them and is honest. Biden also has good numbers, but not as good.
The mixed evidence comes from head to head polling. In swing states the Real Clear Politics polls give Biden an advantage, nationally the polling suggests that Sanders would beat Trump in 2020 and would have obliterated Trump in 2016.
Hope and change
On to the more subjective political assessment.All the polling indicates that Americans are not happy and want change. Obama successfully campaigned on hope and change. That was not how he governed, but it was how he won elections as a skilful campaigner.
Biden runs on nothing will fundamentally change like Clinton ran on "America is already great". In 2016 Clinton won with the people who thought their candidates "Cares about people like me", "Has the right experience" or "Has good judgment", but Trump won the "Can bring needed change" with 83%, according to exit polling.
NYT and Trump endorsements
Intriguingly Biden did not even get the NYT endorsement, in fact he was not even in their top four, although they are his people. The NYT endorsement went to Warren and Klobuchar.In public Trump may ignore Sanders, so much that I have the impression he deeply fears Sanders. But in private, in a secret recoding by his Ukrainian friend in crime, Lev Parnas, Trump admits that he fears Sanders the most. He may be an incompetent lazy fool, but he does know marketing.
Socialism
In the introduction I already argued that the Republicans making the same-old empty attacks by calling Sanders a socialist is welcome. There is also polling on this question. Data For Progress polled people whether they preferred Trump or Sanders with three different formulations:- No information: “If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump?”
- Partisan cues: “If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump?”
- Socialists and billionaires: “If the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Democrat Bernie Sanders, who wants to tax the billionaire class to help the working class and Republican Donald Trump, who says Sanders is a socialist who supports a government takeover of healthcare and open borders?”
Political record and campaign
A debate between Biden and Trump would look like the fight between Konstantin Chernenko and Ronald Reagan in Two Tribes Go To War. Biden runs on his record. He is thus vulnerable to what Trump does best and enjoys the most in life: denigrating other people in the media.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes
Sanders runs on a policy platform and is thus less vulnerable to personal attacks. A platform with many policies Trump ran on in 2016, but did not execute because he campaigned as a populist, but governs as an establishment Republican plus hatred.
In times where people identify as Republican because they hate Democrats and identify as Democrat because they hate Republicans it is difficult to win elections by advocating for the policies of the other side. There are naturally policies that appeal to large majorities, that may thus also convince people from the other side.
That such policies are not implemented yet is because of the corrupting influence of money in politics and media. A politician who is free from such influences can make a highly attractive policy platform. A politician who floated up due to their support for the donor class and corporations is restricted. Corporations are not charities, they expect a return on investment. The donor class has different interests and world views than the rest of us. A policy package designed for them will be less attractive for voters.
The upside is the money, which clearly helps the campaign, as we can see in billionaire Bloomberg buying a preposterous vote share. In the past voters may have naively expected that the money did not have much influence and it also took time for the political class to become corrupted by it. But the distance between Washington DC and America has grown together with the length of the list of popular policies that have no chance of passing Congress.
Even if Biden would promise the same policies in the primary as Sanders, people by now expect a general election pivot and a cabinet full of people from the short lists of the donors. Consequently, there is now a much larger bonus for a reputation of honesty and consistency. Thus a people-power campaign needs less money in 2020.
Imagine Trump would legalize marijuana and remove American troops from Iraq. That would sink a Biden general election campaign. Biden not only voted for the Iraq war, already 5 years before the Iraq war, in 1998 Biden was making the case for a ground war.
There is a lot in Biden's record that can be used by the Trump campaign to suppress the Democratic turnout using targetted social media ads. Workers will get ads about Biden's position on the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and NAFTA. Poor and old people about Biden trying to reduce Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Joe Biden lied about participating in the Civil Rights movement, admitted as much in 1987, but in this campaign he again started lying about it. Trump will not care about the hypocrisy of him pointing to such problems given his own abysmal record. His authoritarian followers will not see the targetted ads and would also not really care.
Sanders can hammer Trump on the promises Trump made and broke. Trump's budgets reduced Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, which he had promised to protect. Trump's trade deals are almost the same and were negotiated with corporations at the table. Trump promised that his healthcare plan would cover everyone and would be cheaper, while millions lost their health insurance.
Project fear of the Democratic establishment likes to name drop candidates like George McGovern, but somehow do not mention Hillary Clinton, John Kerry or Al Gore. They especially do not mention Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won the presidency four times and whose New Deal has much in common with Sanders' platform. Also on the Republican side it seems to be hard to make the case that Republicans won who agreed with Democrats, while those who fought Democrats lost. Quite the opposite.
Winning the primary election
Polling aggregator 538 converts the polling information into a probability of winning the nomination by winning the majority of the delegates. The methodology seems to be sound and is likely the best estimate we have.
Nate Silver of 538 seemed a bit dismayed at how much the prediction changed after Iowa. The model gives a bonus for winning Iowa, which traditionally helps candidates in future races. Silver wondered whether the bonus was too large given that Sanders and Buttigieg are tied for one winning metric (the delegate equivalents). The bonus is to take the positive media coverage into account, but the media put much emphasis on the tie and less on Sanders winning the popular vote (in the first and final round), while Silver's model gave all three metrics equal weight.
My impression is that the jump was mostly so large because Biden lost so enormously and is on track to also losing the next two primaries. At the same time the competitors of Biden do not have much chance of winning. Buttigieg may do well today in New Hampshire, but hardly has any staff in subsequent states and nearly no support among non-white voters. Amy Klobuchar is rising, but still polling badly nationally.
In the betting market billionaire Bloomberg is the runner up after Sanders. He has spend $200 million on ads and bought himself 12% in national polling. This is still rising and it thus makes sense that a market would give him a bonus over polling. But as soon as he becomes a serious candidate people will bring up his atrocious record, today #BloombergIsARacist is trending as an appetiser. The media will be nice to him, Bloomberg is expected to spend a billion in ads and every media outlet wants to get some of that. But I expect that social media will keep him small.
Thus I do not see Buttigieg, Klobuchar or Bloomberg winning, but they all have a chance of succeeding Biden and will likely stay in the race a long time, splitting and wasting establishment votes.
Biden's campaign runs on money, which he only gets when he will likely win; the donors want a return on investment. So he may be forced out of the race, although I see him as the only serious competitor to Sanders. Warren might see it coming that she will stay below the 15% threshold for most primaries and chose to combine her campaign with Sanders'. However, she could also wait for Biden dropping out and may then have a chance.
[ Update after the New Hampshire primary. 538 now has "no one" as the most likely winner of the primary, but with Sanders as close second.
Sanders is the clear frontrunner in the current crowded field, but tends to get only a quarter of the vote. So it remains interesting what would happen when the field winnows. Some pundits simply add up all the other "moderate" candidates; that is not how it works.
A recent YouGov/Yahoo head to head poll of the main primary candidates suggests that Sanders would also win in that situation. Sanders would beat Klobuchar by 21 points, Bloomberg by 15 points, but also Biden by 4 points and Warren by 2 points. Also Warren would beat all the other candidates. Life-long Republican Bloomberg would loose against all other candidates. Biden got some hits, but of the "moderates" he is still the strongest competition against Sanders. ]
Nate Silver gives Sanders a chance of 46% of winning. Silver's model has an additional chance of 27% that no one will directly win a majority. If Sanders does have a clear plurality, it would be handing the presidency to Trump to nominate someone else. So also in case of a contested convention Sanders has a good chance of winning. Furthermore, polling for Sanders tends to go up in the weeks before primaries. That is the moment people start paying attention and talking to each other. So I feel my prediction of 60% chance of Sanders winning the primary is reasonable.
If we combine that with a 90% chance of winning the general election, the chance of stopping the class warfare against us is 54%. Let's hope for the best.
Related reading
Sunrise Movement endorses Bernie Sanders for President: "Senator Sanders has made it clear throughout his political career and in this campaign that he grasps the scale of the climate crisis, the urgency with which we must act to address it, and the opportunity we have in coming together to do so."USA Today: Moderate Democrats have a duty to consider Sanders. He has a clear path to beating Trump. "This senator isn’t even my favorite senator running for the nomination. Yet one reason I have to seriously consider Sanders is that he has the clearest path to uniting the Democratic Party and ousting the evil clown in the Oval Office."
538: You’ll Never Know Which Candidate Is Electable
MostElectable.com
Bernie Sanders leads Donald Trump in polls, even when you remind people he’s a socialist. Socialism is unpopular, but America’s leading socialist isn’t.
Shaun King: 2 truths and 31 lies Joe Biden has told about his work in the Civil Rights Movement
Leftism Isn’t Very Appealing to Nonvoters. But Bernie Sanders Is.
Take the Money and Run. The 2020 Democratic primary has been as much about how candidates raise money as what they want to do once in office.
538: What Fourth-Quarter Fundraising Can Tell Us About 2020
Because it does not fit the stereotype: Bernie Sanders Leads Trump in Donations From Active-Duty Troops
If you want a counter-view there is this terrible piece by Jonathan Chait, be warned that it is filled to the brim with misinformation: Running Bernie Sanders Against Trump Would Be an Act of Insanity. He is also the author of "Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination". Countering all misinformation would be another blog post, luckily Jacobin did a part: "Jonathan Chait Is Wrong About Everything, Including Sanders' Electability."
USA Today: Trump loses almost every matchup with top 2020 Democrats in Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan, polls find
