Uninformed Confusion Takes an Early Lead in the '28 Democratic Primary
My money's on Who The Fuck Knows?
Holy shit — did you see the latest poll about the 2028 Democratic nomination? Here it is, from Issue Insights and the Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics:
Not what I expected. I thought that the coconut-pilled joy we saw in 2024 was people rationalizing the emergence of a not-great-but-acceptable option, like when you’re driving in a rural area and come across a Hardee’s. I guess the K-Hive was hibernating underground like cicadas — let’s just hope that they hatch during an election year next time.
Of course, there’s also this poll from Echelon Insights:
Those results are similar to Polymarket, except that Polymarket has AOC second. And no: AOC’s Clark Griswold-esque tour of Europe did not hurt her status as far as the markets are concerned:
So, perhaps Newsom is the frontrunner. If you ignore the many polls that have Harris ahead. And AOC is either second, third, or eighth and getting beat by J.B. Pritzker — somewhere in there.
But maybe the smart thing to do is to focus on the early primary states — we must not overlook the grand American tradition of having seven states make decisions for the other 43. Here’s a poll by the University of New Hampshire of likely New Hampshire voters:
What does all this mean? It means that basically nothing means anything at this point. The only people paying attention this early in the game are diseased weirdos like you and me. 98 percent of people who encounter a pollster simply mumble a name that they’ve heard before to get the pollster to go away. It can be easy to forget how the primary cycle normally plays out, but let’s take a breath and recall a few patterns that indicate how little we know at this point.
One person assumed to be a front-runner will probably fall flat on their face. Kamala Harris in 2020 certainly fits that description, and so do Jeb Bush, Ron DeSantis, and — going way back — Mario Cuomo. Typically, the person became a front-runner due to their name recognition and high-profile job, which can cause insiders to miss the fact that they have the personality of a sock full of dirt. Though Kamala is basically the opposite — people thought her Mom-after-two-glasses-of-wine vibe might outweigh her relatively thin résumé, but it turns out that voters want a candidate they can picture having a beer with, not a candidate they can picture having five margaritas and a cocktail called a “dolphin orgasm” with.
There might be a late-arriver to the race loved by the political smart set, and that person’s campaign will resemble the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic. Pundits get way up our asses with our theories: We’ll convince ourselves that the ideal candidate is a socially moderate outsider with Afro-Cuban roots and a strong position on beet sugar production, and therefore the mayor of Moose Vagina, Michigan must run. This person will be talked into running, the Politico set will shit their pants about how the race “JUST GOT A MAJOR SHAKEUP!!!” and then the candidate will drop out three days later with $70 million in campaign debt. Candidates like Wesley Clark and Fred Thompson fit this description, and Michael Bloomberg would fit except that no person on this planet or any other wanted Michael Bloomberg to run.
A candidate whose campaign is declared dead might become a contender and possibly win. The campaigns of Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Joe Biden were all declared dead by pundits — Biden went from “basically dead” to “likely nominee” virtually overnight (only to reverse the pattern four years later). This mistake is usually caused by looking at national polls and forgetting that the primary is only a winter event in about three states, while the rest of the country knows that they’ll be asked to vote in late spring or possibly not at all.
New Hampshire will probably vote for whoever didn’t win in Iowa just to be pricks. There is strong evidence that New Hampshire voters like to brattily assert their independence from Iowa like a teenager dabbling with Buddhism just to piss off their Christian parents. The Iowa winner typically gets the “frontrunner” label, which makes New Hampshire decide that the candidate is totally lame and corporate, so there’s a reshuffling that typically happens on the eighth real day of the campaign.
All of which is to say that we basically know nothing at this point. We’re not in the first minute of the first quarter; we’re in the Early Renaissance and our sport will not be invented for another 500 years. Political types are nerds who go home and do their homework right away, but most people will crash on the voting assignment at the last minute. So, whichever candidate you prefer: My advice would be to not get too high or too low. Newsom’s status as the putative front-runner seems a lot less glamorous when you call it “the Jeb Bush spot”. And the all-over-the-map polls are a reminder that we’re two years away from most voters paying any attention at all.