Nate Cohen over at the Upshot does a piece in the NY Times about how Biden , who leads in all but a few early Democratic Presidential nomination polls, has a very good chance , but ?
The bookies and some other’s favor Kamala Harris….
It depends on history repeating itself based on polling or, a over reliance on how Donald Trump surprised everyone. and social media….
The traditional metrics suggest that there might be a clear front-runner for the 2020 nomination: Joe Biden. A decade ago, pundits might have wondered whether he was the “inevitable” nominee. Now it’s not clear whether the old metrics and rules of thumb still apply.
Presidential primaries have been getting strange lately, and it started well before Donald J. Trump defied every expectation to win the Republican nomination.
No candidate, Republican or Democrat, has received more than 55.2 percent of the popular vote during a presidential primary season without an incumbent president since John Kerry in 2004. Hillary Clinton got that 55.2 percent share in 2016, and she had the benefit of entering the race with stronger support in the polls than any modern candidate. But in six of the nine similar contests before 2008, that number was surpassed.
It’s not just that the front-runners have fared poorly in recent cycles. It’s that they face new and stronger kinds of challenges — underpinned by political and technological changes that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Today there are media-driven boom-bust candidates, who come from nowhere to earn a shot at a lasting role in the race. The trend reflects the rise of cable news and the internet, which have changed the way voters consume information about the campaign. More candidates are drawn into the field, because they’ll have more chances to succeed…..
image…NY Times