Who ran the worst campaign this year (D&R)

[IceSpear]

Democrats and Republicans

This (sane)

But really, Chafee and Jeb. Though compelling arguments could be made for any of these:

O'Malley
Webb
Rubio
Carson
Paul
Jindal
Walker
Perry

I don't consider Lessig any more serious of a candidate than Rocky De La Fuente or Willie Wilson.

[IceSpear]

Jeb was suppoused to be a frontrunner and how did it end?

I'm still waiting for an apology from all the "Jeb and Hillary are in the same positions and will meet the same fate!" pundits.

[IceSpear]

I voted Webb, though as noted above, he didn't really run a campaign, he just stood there for about 20 seconds.

Voted Jeb on the R side, though it was a cavalcade of fail on the R side this year.

With regards to Webb, you could say the same thing about Jim Gilmore on the Republican side.

I voted for Jeb! but I forget about Scott Walker when voting.  I don't know though that those who dropped out before the primaries started really ran the same type of campaign as those who were still in the race.  Maybe the Republicans should be split in those two separate categories.

But nobody ever cared about Gilmore (except Atlas, of course.) Webb got a lot more hype since he was the first to enter the race.

Webb is a good answer. Remember all the hype he got? (much appeal to the southern Democrats etc.)

Though on that point, if we're going by hype, O'Malley definitely beats Webb there. The pundits were insisting in early-mid 2015 that he would become Hillary's main challenger (if Warren and Biden didn't run, lol.) Instead he got 0.5% in a state he camped out in for a year then dropped out.

[IceSpear]

This was a massive opportunity for Rand Paul and boy did he blow it.

I agree he ran a terrible campaign, but did he ever really have a chance? He looked decent in 2013-2014 as the GOP began to gradually move away from hawkishness, but after the rise of ISIS and multiple terror attacks, hawkishness was reinvigorated and he was basically DOA. On top of that, the rise of Bernie stole all the college students/internet activists/Redditors/young white men in general (his dad's main demographics) away from him, leaving him with basically nothing left.

I picked O'Malley and Walker, because both were largely hyped and had a real opportunity to become serious candidates / their party's nominee and they completely blew it. O'Malley was talked about as the major Hillary Clinton alternative, and he practically lived in Iowa prior to the election and only received about 0.5%. Realistically, he should've been the Hillary alternative and he allowed a 75 year old Democratic socialist from Vermont to steal that title from him. I love Bernie, and of course Bernie's strengths played into his rise (it wasn't only O'Malley that led to Bernie's rise) but I feel like O'Malley should've performed stronger.

I always thought O'Malley's flameout was predictable, for one simple reason: anyone who was against Hillary Clinton for being too right wing/neoliberal/warmongerish/whatever was not going to be afraid of a guy who called himself a socialist. If anything, it would be a positive (and indeed it was among that segment of voters.) O'Malley's constituency of "voters who think Hillary Clinton is too right wing but are also scared of socialism" is about as big as the percentage of the vote he received in Iowa. His campaign was bad though, but like Paul, even if he ran a good one I think he was doomed regardless. He was completely boxed out.