Nate Silver: Bernie not polling like a favorite

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Jesus, the ignorance in this thread.

I live in an area that's literally surrounded by black - and actually quite diverse - churches.  They are churches, not GOTV factories.

Shave your neckbeards and leave your rooms some time please.

I did absolutely nothing to suggest that they aren't real churches.

If I said Evangelical churches were central to the Republican GOTV operations, would you have a problem with that?

Yes, actually.

Evangelicals are quite diverse.  They vote heavily Republican as a whole, but most churches simply do not discuss politics other than the usual social issues.  The Moral Majority is not a thing anymore.  Mainline emergent churches are growing.

So your objection is that not EVERY SINGLE black church is involved in GOTV and not EVERY SINGLE Evangelical church is involved in GOTV?

I will concede, that is the case, I think people who aren't pedants realize I wasn't saying otherwise. Even pedants probably realize that wasn't what I was saying but pedants gonna be pedants.

My point is that the media conversation with regard to the role of churches and politics is laughably embarrassing.  The vast majority of churches - black, white, or otherwise - do not discuss politics.  They view abortion as a moral issue and view homosexuality as sinful.  That is about the extent of "politics" within most Christian churches.

(And that's without considering that black evangelicals are almost always excluded from the conversation.  It was not until people like Rev. William Barber jumped onto the scene that the media realized that there are black evangelicals, too!)

In other words: the private voting habits of church's parishioners need not reflect on the activities of the church itself.  The Johnson Amendment explicitly prohibits churches from endorsing or opposing politicians.

Missing the point yet again. Everyone knows the Johnson Amendment, but it doesn't go far enough in dividing the religious/political sphere.

Do you actually go to a church?

You know what - it doesn't matter, seeing as you ignored 2/3 of my post.

[Famous Mortimer]

I wonder how many other people are going to deny the usually always acknowledged reality that churches are political just to try to own me.

[Beet]

Congratulations, Bernie.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

I wonder how many other people are going to deny the usually always acknowledged reality that churches are political just to try to own me.

As someone who's been an active churchgoer for many years, attended many different types of churches and denominational services, went to a Christian college, and has actually studied religion, I think my input is valid on this, thank you very much.

[TML]

Please note that Mr. Silver is going by polling and statistical data, so it does leave room for him to be off sometimes.

Remember that in the year after the 2016 election, Silver wrote that even with the benefit of hindsight, he would still have considered Hillary a favorite based on polling data, albeit not a particularly heavy one (in his view, such a consideration would have made Trump's win not terribly surprising).

[PaperKooper]

Yes, Biden is the one polling like a favorite. 

[Progressive Pessimist]

That's obviously true in a field as large as this. How he performs in 2020 will ultimately tell us whether his performance last time was truly pro-Sanders or more anti-Clinton all along.

[Ilhan Apologist]

A crucial point here is that it's possible the large 2016 field made being a factional candidate an ADVANTAGE. Trump initially had a very low ceiling but a high floor, which proved beneficial in a primary where every candidate was reduced to their floor. If this is true, it's good news for both Biden and Sanders, who both have relatively large bases.

[OneJ]

Tell us something that we don’t already know, Nate.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

So weird how nobody is really addressing the arguments in the posted article:

Historically, though, candidates who are polling at only about 20 percent nationally despite the near-universal name recognition that Sanders enjoys don’t have a great track record. From our research on the history of past primary polls, I found 15 candidates from past nomination processes who, like Sanders, (i) polled at an average of between 15 percent and 25 percent4 in national polls in the first six months of the year before the Iowa caucuses5 and (ii) who had high or very high name recognition.

Three of these candidates won their nominations; the other 12 lost. That would imply that Sanders has around a 20 percent chance of winning the nomination, about where he is in betting markets.

[...]

From what data we do have, however, Sanders’s favorability ranks somewhere in the middle of the Democratic pack. While Sanders does well in the Morning Consult poll, he has relatively high negatives in the polls of Iowa and New Hampshire. On average between the polls, Sanders has a favorable rating of 70 percent and an unfavorable rating of 22 percent, or a ratio of 3.1 to 1. That’s good, but not great. Julian Castro and Amy Klobuchar are much less well-known than Sanders but have about the same favorable-to-unfavorable ratio among voters who know them. And Buttigieg, Biden, Harris, Cory Booker and O’Rourke have better ratios than Sanders.

Hilariously, people in this thread think they are clever or particularly insightful by parroting "lmao Sliver couldn't preditc Trump!!" but Silver even acknowledges this in the piece

We made all of those arguments in 2016 about Donald Trump, about which — of course — we were pretty darned wrong.

The parallels between Sanders in 2020 and Trump in 2016 aren’t perfect, by any means. Sanders isn’t exactly a traditional politician, but he’s much closer to being one than a reality-TV star like Trump is. Trump initially polled poorly but surged in the summer of 2015, whereas Sanders started out polling well from the get-go.8 Trump (after his surge) was polling in first place, whereas Sanders is second behind Biden. Perhaps most importantly, Republicans use a winner-take-all system in some of their primaries, especially later on the race, so winning 30 or 35 or 40 percent of the vote could allow Trump to win a preponderance of delegates. The Democratic system is more proportional, so the same vote totals for Sanders might result in a contested convention.

Still, the cases are similar enough that Democrats see the parallels — “a political scenario all too reminiscent of how Mr. Trump himself seized the Republican nomination in 2016” is how the Times article put it. Reporters and people analyzing the campaigns see the parallels too, and that undoubtedly makes them reluctant to downplay Sanders’s chances — all the more so since Sanders himself did better in 2016 than most people (myself included) expected.

Fair point I suppose, but I'd like to know how he's behind Harris of all people. If Sanders is not polling like a favorite, she is most certainly not. And just going by the polling, nothing I've seen suggests her base is anywhere near as wide as Sanders is at the moment, even when you factor in second choice preference for the field.

He addresses this in the article, which I take it you did not read.

Instead, Sanders aides told The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere that they think they can win the nomination with as little as a 30 percent plurality of delegates. That’s a risky strategy since it would necessarily entail a contested convention, where party insiders would play an outsized role. Nor would Sanders, a 77-year-old white man, reflect the various constituencies of the Democratic Party (and the demographics of the delegates themselves) as well as someone like Harris might.

[...]

Julian Castro and Amy Klobuchar are much less well-known than Sanders but have about the same favorable-to-unfavorable ratio among voters who know them. And Buttigieg, Biden, Harris, Cory Booker and O’Rourke have better ratios than Sanders.

I would respond to many points that I think are faulty in the article, but then I'd have "persecution complex", so I'll pass.

I'm not trying to be cheeky but this exactly what somebody with a persecution complex would say.

[SInNYC]

A crucial point here is that it's possible the large 2016 field made being a factional candidate an ADVANTAGE. Trump initially had a very low ceiling but a high floor, which proved beneficial in a primary where every candidate was reduced to their floor. If this is true, it's good news for both Biden and Sanders, who both have relatively large bases.

I think not only does a large field make a factional advantage a plus, but it makes the 3rd place candidates important. Lets say IA has 2 strong candidates. Then, the 3rd place candidate becomes important since the top 2 finishers dont want to be in the same faction as the 3rd place candidate eating into their votes in future primaries.