As the primary season continues from the first two summer debates, the crowded field of democratic candidates is slowly narrowing. Many candidates have begun to be cut out due to the ever increasing pressures of the qualifying deadlines required before they are able to secure a spot on the Houston stage.
To qualify for the debate each candidate must meet the polling and grassroots funding thresholds. Candidates must receive 2% in at least four national polls that are sponsored by a pre selected organization. In order to qualify in the grassroots funding deadline, the candidate must receive 130,000 unique donors over the course of time before the debate. What makes the fundraising efforts even more challenging is gaining a minimum of 400 unique donors from 20 different states, which is done specifically in an effort to provide national diversity to the candidate’s campaign.
So far, the ten candidates who have made it to the next debate stage are: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Cory Booker (NJ), Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, Senator Kamala Harris (CA), Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN), Former Representative Beto O’Rourke (TX), Senator Bernie Sanders (VT), Senator Elizabeth Warren (MA), and finally Businessman Andrew Yang. An aggregated poll calculated by Real Clear Politics, however, suggests that many of these candidates are barely succeeding in making the threshold with only Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttigieg, and O’Rourke polling above 2%. Even candidates like our own mayor Bill De Blasio seem to be polling well below one percent with him only polling at a dismal 0.6%. The polls still give Former Vice President Joe Biden a ten point lead over candidates Sanders and Warren who are both neck and neck for second.
Although the two runner-ups are neck and neck, many see them as a combined front against the more conservative bulwark of the Democratic Party. Combined, the two leftist candidates, Warren and Sanders, would be polling at 35%, well over Biden’s 28% average. These shifting tides in the Democratic Party seem to be a double edged sword. While many younger voters are energized by these left wing populists such as Sanders and Warren, these candidates also may alienate the center, leading that group of voters to either vote Republican or not at all. Other candidates from the Democratic Party seem to falter in their campaigns by attempting to straddle the middle of the road while so many others do the same.
