Imagine that a convention of clowns met to design an amusing, crazy-quilt schedule to nominate presidential candidates. The resulting system would probably look much as ours does today. The incoherent organization of primaries and caucuses, and the candidates’ mad-dash attempts to move around the map, would be funny if the […] Read more »
Just how big was Klobuchar’s surge?
Klobusurge. Klobucharge. Klomentum. Whatever you want to call it, it finally materialized on Tuesday night. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) finished third in the New Hampshire primary with roughly 20 percent of the overall vote, vaulting past former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). And even though Sen. […] Read more »
Failures of Punditry (and Polls)
Last month I wrote what I called my New Year’s “irresolutions” – a set of observations on the Democratic field that I cloaked in uncertainty. I promised to come back and identify those that were wrong. There are two standouts in that regard: (1) Joe Biden’s staying power is far […] Read more »
A contested convention looks even more possible after New Hampshire
The 2020 New Hampshire primary is in the books, and one of the messiest primaries in recent history seemingly got even messier. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders did win as expected. He remains the national front runner in polling and fundraising. But Sanders got just 26% of the vote and finished […] Read more »
The Moderate Pileup, and the Sanders Path to the Nomination
The results of the Iowa and New Hampshire contests amount to a strategic victory for Bernie Sanders, fracturing his opposition and opening a path for him to win the nomination. But the results do not leave him in a dominant position. His support in national polls remains in the low-to-mid […] Read more »
Sanders Won The New Hampshire Vote. So How Did ‘Klobucharge’ Win The Narrative?
In a late night installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew reacted to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s win in the New Hampshire primary. They also looked at the parts of the electorate that powered Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar to strong second and third place finishes, respectively, and asked […] Read more »