By Depending on who you consider a major candidate, there are now 20-plus Democrats running for President. That is an absurdly high number, and one that will make the race more difficult to predict than ever. In that vein, there are a few numbers to watch for in polls (and, eventually, election results) that will give you a better sense of how candidates are doing.
15% – This is a critically important number. To win the nomination, candidates need to win a majority of the delegates to the Democratic convention. While delegates are assigned proportionally based on percentage of the vote (50% of the vote in a state earns you 50% of the delegates), that typically only applies above the viability threshold.
This threshold, which is usually set at 15% (though it depends on the year and the state), determines who earns delegates. Candidates who earn less than 15% in a given jurisdiction will earn no delegates.
Crucially, this typically applies to your vote share by county or Congressional district as opposed to statewide, as delegates are distributed on a county/district basis. So, if a district has 10 delegates up for grabs, and Cory Booker earns 10% of the vote in that district, he won’t earn any delegates. But if he earns 20% of the vote, he’ll earn 2.
It can be more complicated then this (especially when you have odd numbers of delegates), but the 15% mark is typically the point at which candidates can start earning delegates. Below that, and they may be out of luck.
Right now, only 2 candidates – Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders – are above the 15% threshold.
30% – This is less of a hard and fast rule than the 15% rule. 30% is just typically around the portion of the vote share that candidates need to win in crowded early state fields. In such a large field, it’s tough to get much higher than 30%, so anyone hitting that mark has a good shot at winning and will almost certainly place in the state’s top 3.
Some examples: in the 2016 GOP Iowa caucuses, Ted Cruz won with 27.6% of the vote and Donald Trump took second with 24.3%. In the 2008 Democratic caucuses, Barack Obama won with 37.6%, while John Edwards and Hillary Clinton took 29.7% and 29.4% respectively. 30% is not a guaranteed win, but it puts you in the mix.
Currently, only Joe Biden is polling at or around 30%.
50% – This is the big one. If anyone can manage to consistently break 50% before voting begins, they’ll have an excellent shot at winning.
As mentioned, Democrats award delegates proportionally. Additionally, a substantial portion of the delegates (including from giant states like Texas and California) will be awarded on Super Tuesday, just one month after voting begins in Iowa. If one candidate picks up 50% of those delegates amid a still fractured field, it will be hard for anyone to catch up.
That does cut the other way, however. If the field remains fractured through Super Tuesday and no one breaks 50% till after, the proportional delegate awards will make it difficult for anyone to cobble together a majority. So, even if one candidate has clear momentum, they may not be able to win the nomination outright.
At that point, we would go to a contested convention, something that hasn’t been seen in the modern primary era. What would happen there is anybody’s guess.
Ultimately, candidates’ polling numbers matter most in the context of other candidate numbers. 10% is great if no one else is breaking double digits – and terrible if half a dozen other candidates are above 15%. But these numbers give some absolute markers – guideposts, if you will – to help contextualize how the candidates are doing.
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