Tonight, two polling and analytics firms, WPA Intelligence (Republican) and the Honan Strategy Group (Democratic) sought to answer the following key questions about the September 12th Democratic Presidential debate: • Which candidate Won the evening as judged by Twitter impact?• Which candidate(s) Lost and had the most disappointing performance as […] Read more »
What Happened When The Front-Runners Were All On Stage
The three polling leaders — Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — shared a debate stage for the first time Thursday night. From the spin room floor in Houston, the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast broke down who came out on top and who struggled. FiveThirtyEight Read more »
Biden bear-hugged Obama. His foes couldn’t pry him loose.
Historically, when a former vice president runs for a promotion to the top job, he struggles with the legacy of his former boss. George H. W. Bush was caricatured as a wimp as he tried to step out of Ronald Reagan’s shadow. Al Gore was paralyzed as he tried to […] Read more »
Biden delivers the debate performance he needed, despite occasional missteps
With all the leading Democratic candidates on the same stage for the first time this year, former vice president Joe Biden on Thursday delivered the kind of performance his supporters have been waiting for — combative when needed and in the thick of the action throughout. Biden did not dominate […] Read more »
The third Democratic debate: Biden vs the rest
There were two headlines from last night’s debate. One surprise: The candidates not named Joe Biden got the message that attacking former President Obama might not be a great way of appealing to a Democratic electorate that reveres him. Less of a surprise: The debate did more to solidify the […] Read more »
Democratic Debate Analysis: Who Has the Right to Question Biden’s Competence?
It’s likely that even those analysts who love to declare winners, losers, and game-changing moments (a practice largely eschewed here at Honest Graft) won’t find all that much fodder in Thursday night’s Democratic debate. The biggest pre-debate media hype focused on the opportunity for a dramatic personal showdown between Joe […] Read more »