Update on study of secondary choices for president

[Bucky]

Last edited Wed Feb 26, 2020, 12:00 AM - Edit history (1)

the updated findings are down in the 3rd post in this thread

I've asked people in the forum to name their top four candidates in order of preference. I'm up to 59 responses so far.

Top picks are not a surprise
Biden - - 32%
Sanders- 25%
Warren - 25%

It's early in the day, so that might explain a higher response favoring Biden than what the site's polling has. But this is more like a focus group (qualitative data) instead of quantitative findings.

The interesting parts are that 2nd preference findings. a 50%+ majority selects Warren as they backup choice. That include nearly all of the Sanders voters.

Across all four choices, Warren is selected by >90% of those responding. Among the 9 respondent picking none of the top 3 choices, 4 picked her for second place and 8 of the 9 mentioned her for their top four.

As the race tightens, Warren is certain to pick up more steam (whereas Sanders has nearly maxed out his support prior to the convention.) Effectively speaking, Sanders and Biden are in a sprint and Warren is in a marathon.

I'll wait a day or so for more people respond before I post the final findings. But there's much reason for hope

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. That matches my 'gut' feeling ...

Warren is high on the list for many people. Her popularity grows over time, as people learn more about her.

[Bucky]

2. New Numbers

It's now at 87 instead of 49 survey respondents. I'm going to wait till the morning to run the numbers one final time, after a few more people post their opinions

Overall responses still match up DU preferences. I'm just using that for control of the sampling. DU isn't representative of the full Democratic Party so I'm more interested in second and third place choices.

But for top choice, it's Warren 33%, Biden 30%, Sanders 21%, Buttigieg 8%. If you look at the forum's preferences and exclude undecideds, the shares are Warren 36%, Biden 25%, Sanders 22%, Buttigieg 8%. So these responses are a good representation for DU overall.

Warren is 42% of 2nd place choices, leading among Sanders, Biden, and "other" supporters (in fact 17 of 18 Sanders voters named Warren as their top back up). She's mentioned by 79 of the 87 respondents so far (91%), inclusive of those who didn't name a 2nd choice.

I don't expect the numbers to change much after this. Warren is uniquely positioned to unify the party, including holding onto the Sanders base.