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finley ,

then, when we all vote for a progressive, the dnc will just nominate a corporate centrist anyway

tal OP ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

when we all vote

You – as in, the public – wouldn’t be part of this process. The primaries have already happened; the door for a public vote on the matter is closed. This is talking about what kind of party-internal process should happen. She’s talking about whether members of the Democratic Party would get some ability to pick potential alternatives, rather than simply party leadership simply selecting someone.

Whatever happens will happen at the Democratic convention (if Biden steps down and if anything happens at all).

disguy_ovahea ,

You forget that only 20 states have open primaries. Unless independents and NPA voters reregister, it’s likely going to be a moderate Democrat.

Drusas ,

Kamala Harris has less chance of winning than Biden does. Nobody has ever been a big fan of Kamala Harris. She's not popular based on actions or personality, she's a cop, she's a woman, and she's not white.

If the intention is to truly get someone who will win more reliably than Biden, it's going to have to be another old white guy. Or at least a white guy.

It sucks, but that's where we are.

Kecessa ,

She’s polling better than Biden

Drusas ,

Among whom, though?

tal OP ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Kamala Harris has less chance of winning than Biden does.

These guys tried to quantify it based on the limited poll information that we have available:

abcnews.go.com/538/…/story?id=111656941

Let’s get one caveat out of the way: We don’t have that many public polls testing Harris against Trump. From April 1 through July 2, just over a dozen polls asked about this alternative matchup. But we do have polls from all the major swing states, thanks largely to tracking from Morning Consult, and we have enough national surveys to calculate a Harris-versus-Trump national polling average — and thus to forecast how she would perform in states without any polls.

For the most part, national polls have shown Harris doing about the same as Biden in head-to-head polls against Trump. In a March Fox News poll for example, Trump led Harris by 6 points and Biden by 5 points (well within the survey’s margin of error). And as recently as June 28, a Data for Progress poll showed the president and vice president each losing to Trump by 3 points (also within the margin of error). That said, a June 28-30 CNN/SSRS poll found Harris losing to Trump by only 2 points while Biden was trailing by 6. This was also within the margin of error but was nonetheless a bigger gap and could mark the beginning of a shift for Harris.

When we plug all these polls into a polls-only version of the 538 forecasting model — which jettisons the economic and political priors our full model uses, giving us an apples-to-apples comparison between candidates — Harris has a slightly higher chance of winning the Electoral College than Biden, but it’s not a significant difference: 38-in-100 versus 35-in-100. On a state-by-state level, Biden looks stronger than Harris in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while Harris’s odds are higher than Biden’s in Nevada.

Harris also does slightly better than Biden in our forecast of the national popular vote. The model forecasts that Trump would outpace Harris nationally by 1.5 points, while he would outrun Biden by 2.1 points. However, this could be an artifact of our model not having any Harris-versus-Trump polls that include independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who tends to take slightly more votes away from Democrats than Republicans when included in a poll.

However, Harris’s popular-vote edge is almost entirely negated by the bigger Electoral College bias against her. In our polls-only forecast pairing Biden against Trump, the Democratic candidate needs to win the popular vote by just 1.1 points to win the presidency. That’s thanks to Biden doing better in Pennsylvania, the likeliest tipping-point state in our model. Harris, by contrast, would need to win the popular vote by 3.5-4 points to win Pennsylvania and, with it, the Electoral College.

However, whether Harris would truly be a stronger candidate than Biden also depends on information besides the polls. In our full forecast model — which includes a variety of non-polling economic and political variables, which we call the “fundamentals” — Harris does much worse than Biden across the board. Whereas Biden has a 48-in-100 chance to win the Electoral College, Harris has only a 31-in-100 chance.

This is thanks in large part to the boost our model confers on Biden as the incumbent president, which is worth an extra point for Biden over Harris in our fundamentals-only forecast of the national popular vote. However, one factor our model does not consider is whether presidents’ approval rating and economic growth impact incumbents running for reelection more than non-incumbents running from the same party, and that may actually push Harris’s numbers over Biden’s. In other words, your mileage may vary depending on how much you believe that Biden should get a boost because he’s the sitting president. There is no objectively correct answer here; one of the reasons election forecasting is hard is that it requires judgment calls like these.

Drusas ,

You are really going to need to tl;dr that. I'm not one to not read, but that's just excessive.

tal OP ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I mean, it’s not a really simple result.

I guess in a nutshell:

  • There is limited Trump-vs-Harris state polling data available. Some has to be predicted based on other polls, and there won’t be many sources to work with.
  • Harris polls slightly better nationwide than Biden, but it’s not by much.
  • However, the model they use also predicts Biden to have a better chance of winning the Electoral College – which is what actually determines whether someone becomes President.
  • However, this model is built based on assumptions that may not hold for this particular unusual situation, and the authors are not sure how well those assumptions will hold up.
Jimbabwe ,

I love this idea. Open primaries are how it should be. Let the blue team do something dynamic and engaging while depriving the orange guy of his beloved spotlight AND showing the population it is least somewhat self aware.

tal OP ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Another option is for Harris to be viewed as the strong front-runner and still allow for an open process, just with the understanding that few, or even no, viable Democrats would challenge her out of fear of being ostracized. In recent weeks, Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan both said they would not run against Harris.

That would be something of a pro forma process then, still selecting Harris.

Apparently Harris isn’t polling much better than Biden overall:

Public and private polls show Harris marginally outperforming Biden, but that she runs stronger than other would-be contenders with crucial demographics, particularly Black voters. Harris supporters and allies contend those surveys merely represent her floor and that support for Harris would grow once she assumed the mantle as the titular head of the party.

However, it might be that she is expected to perform better in the specific states at issue (assuming that switching up the candidate doesn’t alter which states might be swing states…that’s a substantial change).

JayTreeman ,

On 538, Harris is polling better or the same in national polls. The real issue is Trump's large lead in all but 1 swing state.

solrize ,

The more those clowns try to push Biden out, the more I want him to stay in. He’s unlikely to beat Trump, but so is anyone else they have any likelihood of nominating.

timbuck2themoon ,

It’s funny because the thing hurting the dems the most is this infighting bullshit, not Biden.

tal OP ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I don’t have the information to know whether-or-not swapping out Biden is the right move. That’s a technical question that depends on data that I don’t have visibility into, dunno what voting preference is at a state level versus Trump.

But I will say this – if the Democrats are gonna pull the trigger and run someone else, they better do it really quickly if they intend to do so, or stick with Biden. Because any such potential candidate is going to already have their campaign period be very abbreviated.

Like, if they’re serious, I think they should set a date now, one not far down the road, and say that if they haven’t committed to someone else by that date, then they go with Biden. Otherwise, they run the risk of both killing Biden’s campaign and not giving the successor enough time to campaign. Like, this either needs to be done really soon or not happen and be permanently put to bed.

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