As I write this, “Super Tuesday” is hours away. Pete Buttegieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer have all withdrawn from the race. Their supporters and undecided voters are experiencing a mild panic, knowing that they don’t have much time left until they will need to cast their votes in the Primaries.

So one subject that keeps popping up in my social media feed — in the posts and the comments and the tweets — is the worry that one candidate or another will not be “electable.” Democratic voters are worried that, when it comes time in November, one candidate or another will not be able to bring in enough Democratic votes to defeat Trump.

But I would argue that this mentality of fear is both unjustified and even dangerous.

Contrary to the claims of the fear-mongering candidates (who use claims of the other supposedly not being electable in order to garner support for themselves), poll after poll after poll has consistently shown that ALL the three major candidates (Bernie, Biden, and Warren*) beat Trump in any head-to-head matchup. Each of them is comparable in their percentage of victory. ^[1]

And that’s not only in the national polls. After all, Hillary has proven that national numbers are irrelevant. What the Democrats need to do is to take the “Swing States” (for the Electoral College). but even in the polls that focus on the Swing States, all of these candidates match up about equally. ALL of them win by about the same percentage in the swing states, with the exception of Wisconsin, where ALL of them lost to Trump by about the same percentage.

Even if you disregard the polls, evidence shows the equality of the various Democratic candidates.

There is a Professor who is famous for correctly predicting the last several Presidential elections, including Trump in 2016—when most pundits were certain Trump would lose. Prof. Allan Lichtmann has created a list of 13 criteria that he uses to determine the success or failure of a Presidential campaign.^[2] He asserts that the elections in November are NOT based on the candidates as people or as politicians, but merely on the political parties and on some of the major national events of the previous four years.

According to the Professor, people should not choose a candidate during their party’s Primaries based on that person’s likelihood of winning, as opposed to other candidates in the same party. Instead, they should choose a candidate based entirely on the idea of which one they believe would make the best President.

Lichtmann has only one criteria that even remotely considers the candidate as a person, and that is the last on his list: “Charisma.” If the challenging candidate has no “Charisma” (i.e. is not an interesting character), then this not-charismatic candidate would be more likely to lose. (As much as I am not a Bernie Bro, this criteria would be very well filled by Bernie or Warren, who — like them or not — are definitely “characters.” It would not be as well filled by Biden, who is not as… colorful… as Bernie. It would most certainly not be filled by the bland-as-barley-flour Bloomberg.) ^[3]

However, this “Charisma” criteria is only one of several that affect his decision about the viability of a challenging campaign. Of the rest of the criteria on his list, many would currently go in favor of the Democrats (especially in lieu of the Coronovirus outbreak and its likely effect on the economy, such as the drastic Dow Jones drop this past week).

Putting aside the “Charisma” criteria, though, the criteria are all about national events. None of them require a candidate to be sane, have the best most viable proposals, etc. None of them even require the candidate to have a platform.

If you vote merely on the odds for a candidate winning the nomination or winning in November, and not on how their positions align with yours at all, you will tend to choose someone who doesn’t really reflect your values and/or wouldn’t actually make a good President. Because most November elections are about the party and not the candidate, this makes your Primary vote the most important— and most consequential— vote of the election cycle. Voting out of fear (such as choosing the person most likely to defeat your least favorite candidate) can lead to making some very poor choices, rather than voting for the better quality candidate.

So based on both the polls and the prediction of a reliable expert, it’s safe to say that your choice in the Primaries should be done by which candidate you think is the best President, and that you should NOT make your choice based on fear of a competing candidate or fear of an ideology (“Progressive vs Moderate”) winning the nomination.

No matter who you vote for, though, be sure to do one thing: VOTE!
  
[* Note that I do not include Bloomberg here. Not only is there insufficient polling to establish a long track record of his polling numbers, but what little national polling we do have shows him either in a tie with or even losing to Trump. Also, Bloomberg is not on the ballot in many states, so his only path to victory is to win almost every state AND the rest of the candidates would have to not get sufficient delegates to garner the first-round nomination, AND he would have to get ALL the Super-Delegates to vote for him in a Brokered Convention. So analyzing his numbers and the few polls about him is not a productive use of time.]

Source links:
^[1] https://poll.qu.edu/2020-presidential-swing-state-polls/release-detail?ReleaseID=3656

^[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Keys_to_the_White_House

^[3] https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2020/02/27/Allan-Lichtman-Why-Bernie-Sanders-is-electable/stories/202002260015 https://youtu.be/4Y5nBJe8Dlc