Seth Moulton, Democratic Representative from Massachusetts, withdrew from the presidential race on Aug. 23.
Moulton did not make the cut for the September debates, nor had he made the cut for the June and July debates. He will run for re-election for his seat in Congress in 2020.
Joe Walsh, former Republican Representative from Illinois, announced his entry into the presidential race on Aug. 25.
Walsh ran for Congress as a Tea Party candidate, and hosted a radio talk-show after leaving Congress.
We would say "This completes the list of presidential contenders" but we've thought that before and the field has expanded several times this month!
Second Democratic primary debate: July 30-31, 2019
20 contenders debate over two evenings
The Democratic primary debates in Detroit, hosted by CNN, occured during two evenings, July 30 & 31, 2019, for two hours each, with ten candidates each.
Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) is Trump's preliminary nominee. He is the U.S. Rep from Texas' 4th district.
If confirmed by the Senate, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) will call a special election to fill his Congressional seat.
Coats' resignation came about because he and President Trump disagreed about Russian interference in U.S. elections, with Coats presenting FBI and CIA evidence of ongoing election tampering.
Mark Sanford enters Republican race for President, July 17, 2019
Former Governor of South Carolina to take on Trump for nomination
Mark Sanford, former U.S. Rep. and former Governor, announced the "exploratory" stage of his presidential campaign.
Some highlights of his political career and issue excerpts:
Hosted by NBC News and Telemundo; moderated by Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, and José Díaz-Balart; the debates took place at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami, Florida.
The Democratic Party announced the criteria for presidential candidates to qualify for the party's official third and fourth round of debates in September and October. Details:
ABC and Univision will host the September 12th debate, simulcast in English and Spanish. A possible second evening of debates will be decided by the number of candidates meeting the new criteria.
Candidates must qualify by either meeting the minimum number of donors, OR exceeding polling criteria in party-sanctioned polls.
Candidates must gather donations from 130,000 individual donors (this is double the 65,000 donor count for the June and July debates).
Donors must be represented with a minuimum of 400 donors in each of the 50 states (this is double the 200 per-state donor count for the June and July debates).
Candidates must poll at 2% or higher in three party-approved polls during July and August (this is double the 1% polling requirement for the June and July debates).
The first debates will be held June 26 and 27 (maximum of 10 candidates per evening) in Miami and airing on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo. The second debates will be held July 30 and 31 in Detroit and airing on CNN.
As of the end of May, eighteen candidates have qualified for the June Democratic debates (details below; full list of possible candidates on the top of our home page). And today OnTheIssues adds one final possible Democratic debate contender, and two non-Democratic candidates:
Wayne Messam: Democratic Mayor of Miramar Florida; running to qualify for the June debate.
Justin Amash: Elected as a Republican to the United States Congress; he has been recruited by the Libertarian Party to run as their nominee.
Steve Bullock and Michael Bennet announce: May 2, 2019
Montana Governor and Colorado Senator both announce for the Democratic nomination for President
As the Democratic presidential primary debates approach in a few weeks, candidates are making their formal candidacy announcements.
The field has settled on 22 candidates (these 22 are the candidates that OnTheIssues covers, as shown in the "Democratic primary contenders" section on top of our homepage).
However, only 20 will make it into the Democratic primary debates, according to the rules of the early debates.
Candidates can qualify by two methods: either by garnering over 1% in three Democratic Party-sanctioned polls, OR by collecting donations from over 65,000 citizens.
If the number that qualify exceeds 20, as now looks likely, then candidates are prioritized by their poll numbers.
We show below each of the 22 candidates, and their status in both qualification measurements, with two recent poll results.
Few polls include all 22 candidates (some because they had not yet announced; others because 22 is too many!), which is why the "65,000-donor rule" was added.
We list the candidates in the order they qualify for the debates, if the actual qualification were to be held today. (In other words, the 2 at the bottom do not make it).
Candidate
CNN poll in Iowa (12/15/18 net favorable %)
RealClearPolitics average of polls (through 4/29/19)
20th Democratic contender joins debates, April 12, 2019
Rules for debates scheduled for June
OnTheIssues now covers 20 Democratic contenders, which is the maximum allowed by the rules of the early debates.
The first two scheduled debates -- of about a dozen anticipated debates -- will be held in June and July. The rules are:
There will be two debates, of ten candidates each, on two consecutive evenings.
The ten participants in each debate will be selected randomly (unlike the "two-tiered" system of the Republicans in 2016, which led to accusations of having "the kiddie table.")
A candidate qualifies for the debates by exceeding 1% in three Democratic-party-approved polls, OR they can show "grassroots support"...
A candidate shows "grassroots support" by exceeding 65,000 donors in at least 20 states, with at least 200 unique donors per state.
If the number of qualifiying candidates exceeds 20, then the "poll-based qualifiers" get preference over the "donor-based qualifiers," ranked by polling results.
The 20th candidate is Marianne Wilson, who lists her number of donors on the homepage of her website -- at 70% of the required total this week, and expected to reach the required total soon.
The rest of the field of 20 are listed here, in addition to those in our earlier listings below (these are the new additions to our list just since a month ago!):
Here's the catch for Marianne Williamson and the other less-well-known candidates:
Rule #5 above will exclude candidates if any more candidates now join.
When the 21st candidate joins the race, the struggle begins to NOT be cut out.
The list of likely candidates to still join the race? Here are the candidates we expect may announce by the end of May:
Special Election inaugurees into U. S. House of Representatives
A "special election" means a vacant House seat was filled -- and the winner gets seated immediately.
Winners of the general election will be seated on Jan. 3, 2019.
The new members of Congress listed below are part of the "lame duck" session
-- the period after the election and before the new Congress' inauguration in January.
Some special elections took place before November and some races took some time to count -- inauguration dates listed below.
Florida Governor race decided 11/17: Candidate Gillum previously conceded but rescinded his concession due to new-found ballots; Gillum re-conceded on 11/17.
Florida Senate race decided 11/16: Recount did not change result.
Senatorial Results in 35 races:
2 Democratic takeovers: AZ, NV
4 Republican takeovers: FL, IN, MO, ND
22 Democratic retentions: CA, CT, DE, HI, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN-2, MN-6, MT, NJ, NM, NY, OH, PA, RI, VT, VA, WA, WI, WV
2018 House partisan balance: 239 Republicans to 196 Democrats (counting four vacancies as party of incumbent);
2019 House partisan balance: 202/201/200 Republicans to 233/234/235 Democrats.
Total size of Freshman class (new members who were not elected in Nov. 2016): 35/36 Republicans + 60/61/62 Democrats.
OnTheIssues disendorsements for candidates who refuse to take issue stances
OnTheIssues condemns candidates with an "IFFY Award" for running an "Issue-Free campaign." These are "iffy" candidates because they refused to provide voters with information on what they believe and how they will legislate. They are likely to be "iffy legislators" too -- never providing their constituents with information, on the belief that the less voters know, the more likely the "iffy" candidates are to get re-elected.
An IFFY award is a non-partisan condemnation: OnTheIssues doesn't care WHAT candidates' issue stances are -- as long as they HAVE issue stances!
At OnTheIssues, we believe that candidates should make clear their issue stances, and if they don't do that, then they should not run for office at all, and if they get elected and still won't divulge their issue stances, that they should resign or be driven from office by outraged constituents. Following are our three "iffy" candidates for 2018:
NBC-10-TV reports that Fung avoided all primary debates:
"The two favorite contenders for the major party’s nominations are refusing to appear in any of the offered statewide forums.
'It’s not OK in a democracy,' NBC 10's political analyst said. 'Avoiding debates might rub voters the wrong way and they might just end up staying home in the general election.' "
During the general election debate, the Providence Journal reported that Fung's independent opponent Joe Trillo brought up the IFFY issue:
"Trillo saved his most colorful exchanges for Fung, whom he called 'wimpy' for not taking positions on issues."
OnTheIssues has been attempting to gather issue stances from Mayor Fung since 2014, when he also ran for Governor (and also provided few issue stances). Mayor Fung has declined to respond to our VoteMatch quiz repeatedly.
KGOU's Trevor Brown reported that the sole one-hour debate on Sept. 24 "waded into social issues,
including abortion, parental rights and gun control. Neither candidate, however, seemed to want to press these issues as campaign focal points."
Edmondson's opponent, however, has made public his stances on those three issues (and more), while Edmondson has not.
OnTheIssues has been attempting to gather issue stances from Edmondson all campaign season. Edmondson has declined to respond to our VoteMatch quiz repeatedly.
Project VoteSmart reprots, "Chele Farley has refused to provide voters with positions on key issues covered by the 2018 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart and voters like you."
The Auburn Citizen commented that "In her campaign launch video... Farley blamed Gillibrand, a Democrat, for the state not getting its fair share from the federal government.... There wasn't much revealed in the video about Farley's platform."
Farley has continued that lack of platform throughout the campaign, running on a platform of Gillibrand's failings.
OnTheIssues has been attempting to gather issue stances from Farley all campaign season. Farley has declined to respond to our VoteMatch quiz repeatedly.
Predictions in four House races: two GOP victories; two Democratic victories
OnTheIssues makes four predictions in House races for the four districts for which we have web pages for both nominees.
(for most House districts, we only cover the incumbent).
We predict races based on the relative number of viewers of the candidates' pages on our website.
This "polling" method indicates interest in the issue stances of the candidates, which serves as a proxy for voting for candidates.
Downsides of this prediction method include:
- We don't count whether the website viewer actually resides in the district or is registered to vote
- Interest in the issue stances of a candidate could mean negative interest as well as positive interest
- Reading about a candidate doesn't necessarily translate into voting for a candidate
Upsides of this prediction method include:
- This method would have predicted Trump in the 2016 presidential election when most polls predicted Hillary would win.
- Pundits have trouble predicting the 2018 election because hinges on "voter enthusiasm" -- but so does reading our website!
- Internet viewership correlates with youth, which in most elections vote poorly, but are predicted to vote highly in 2018.
Some details of our methodology:
We count only "unique pageviews", which means one "vote" per person for the entire duration of our "poll".
For our House predictions, we count the "viewership score" (number of unique people) from Oct. 1 through Oct. 24 (but if the outcome prediction changes in the next week, we'll report that!)
For our upcoming Gubernatorial and Senatorial predictions, we will count the "viewership score" from Oct. 1 through Oct. 31 (a full month).
The numbers represent unique page views, in some cases for more than one page (because we host a separate page for a gubernatorial candidate who served in the House, e.g.)
House district and analysis:
Predicted winner and loser, and OnTheIssues viewership scores:
The Democratic nominee served in the U.S. House in this district from 2009-2011 and lost re-election in November 2010 to the current Republican incumbent.
In 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in this district, 65-33. Results were similarly lopsided in the previous four presidential elections.
We predict an overwhelming Republican victory in this district.
Democratic incumbent Ruben Kihuen retiring in 2018.
The Republican nominee served in the U.S. House in this district from 2015-2017 and lost re-election in November 2016 to the current Democratic incumbent.
The Democratic nominee served in the U.S. House in this district from 2013-2015 and lost re-election in November 2014 to the current Republican nominee.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in this district, 50-45. Results were similar in 2012, favoring Obama over Romney.
We predict a Republican victory in this district, despite its Democratic history.
Reproduction of material from any OnTheIssues.org pages without written permission is
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1999-2019 by Jesse Gordon, OnTheIssues.org , all rights reserved. OnTheIssues.org 1770 Massachusetts Ave. #630, Cambridge MA 02140
E-mail: submit@OnTheIssues.org, Jesse Gordon, editor-in-chief
Republican incumbent Martha Roby
