Politics
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Democratic voters surveyed by INSIDER polling perceive South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg to be as likely to beat Trump as a generic Democratic candidate.
- 21 Democratic candidates have entered the 2020 presidential field so far, and it's spurring a lively debate over who is the most likely to beat President Donald Trump in the general election.
- To determine exactly how likely Democratic voters perceive each candidate's chances of beating or losing to Trump, INSIDER has been conducting a recurring SurveyMonkey Audience national poll.
- In the most recent iteration of our poll, 33.4% of Democratic voters surveyed think a generic Democratic candidate would beat Trump, 39.7% are neutral, and 26.9% think a generic Democrat would lose to Trump.
- Here are the candidates Democratic voters think are most and least likely to lose to Trump, according to the most recent version of our survey.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
21 Democratic candidates have entered the 2020 presidential field so far, and it's spurring a lively discussion among Democratic voters and commentators over who is the most likely to beat President Donald Trump in the general election - the ever-elusive concept of "electability."
While "electability" can be influenced by a number of factors including a candidate's race and gender, we attempted to break down who Democratic voters see as the most likely to beat Trump
To determine exactly how likely Democratic voters perceive each candidate's chances of beating or losing to Trump, INSIDER has been conducting a recurring SurveyMonkey Audience national poll. You can download every single poll here, down to the individual respondent data.
Read more about how the INSIDER 2020 Democratic primary tracker works.
At this point in the race, we're mainly interested in using our polling to figure out:
- What percentage of Democratic voters are familiar with each candidate in the first place.
- How Democrats rate each candidate's chances of beating President Donald Trump in a general election match-up.
- If a given candidate were to drop out of the race, who their supporters would pivot to.
In the most recent iteration of our poll, 33.4% of Democratic voters surveyed think a generic Democratic candidate would beat Trump, 39.7% are neutral, and 26.9% think a generic Democrat would lose to Trump.
For our purposes, any candidate for whom more than 33% of voters think will beat Trump or for whom less than 27% think will lose to Trump is overperforming Democratic voters' expectations.
It's important to highlight, however, that voters perceiving a given candidate as unlikely to lose doesn't necessarily mean they perceive the same candidate as very likely to win.
For many candidates, especially those with lower name recognition or who haven't been in the race for very long, a substantial percentage of voters were neutral on their chances, meaning they didn't offer up that particular candidate's name as someone they think is either likely or unlikely to beat Trump.
Here are the candidates Democratic voters think are most and least likely to lose to Trump, ranked from who voters think is least likely to most likely, according to the most recent version of our survey: