Nate Silver's Blog, page 63

A Midsummer Overview Of The Democratic Field

When people ask me who I think is going to win the Democratic nomination, I shrug my shoulders and say, “I have no freaking idea.” It’s worth keeping in mind that in a field of 20-something candidates with no runaway frontrunner, all of the candidates are fairly heavy underdogs. Joe Biden is probably going to lose. Kamala Harris is probably going to lose. Elizabeth Warren is probably going to lose. Bernie Sanders is probably going to lose. And so forth.

But the first debate last month, the subsequent polling and the latest set of fundraising numbers provide some clarity about where the race stands, sorting the candidates into what I’d consider to be four relatively distinct tiers. So after taking a couple of weeks mostly off to work on NBA metrics and vacation in Las Vegas playing poker,1 here’s how I currently see the race:

Nate’s not-to-be-taken-too-seriously presidential tiers

For the Democratic nomination, as revised on July 10, 2019

Tier
Sub-tier
Candidates




1
a
Biden, Harris



b
Warren


2
a
Sanders



b
Buttigieg


3
a
Booker



b
Klobuchar, Castro, O’Rourke


4
a
Inslee, Gillibrand



b
Gabbard, Yang



c
Everyone else

We’ve used these tiers before, and as the headline says, they’re not to be taken too seriously. They’re mostly based on the polling — not just national polls, but also early state polls, favorability ratings, polling adjusted for name recognition, etc. — with some further adjustments upward or downward based on other factors, the most important of which I consider to be support from party elites and the ability to build a broad coalition. But they’re not based on any sort of statistical model, and they involve an element of subjectivity.

Let’s go ahead and start from the top, with the three candidates I’d consider to be front-runners.

Tier 1: The front-runners: Biden, Harris and Warren

Biden, Harris and Warren represent three relatively distinct, but fairly traditional, archetypes for party nominees:

Biden, as a former vice president, is a “next-in-line” candidate who is rather explicitly promising to perpetuate the legacy of President Obama and uphold the party’s current agenda. It might not be exciting, but these candidates have pretty good track records.
Harris is a coalition-builder who would hope to unite the different factions of the party — black, white, left, liberal, moderate, etc. — as a consensus choice.
Warren is offering more red meat (or should it be blue meat?) and would represent more of a leftward transformation from the status quo. But she’s simpatico enough with party elites and has broad enough appeal that she isn’t necessarily a factional candidate in the way that Sanders is. Instead, a better analogy for Warren might be Ronald Reagan; they are not comparable in terms of their backgrounds or their political styles, but they are both candidates who straddle the boundary between the ideological wings of their party and the party establishment.

On an empirical basis, the Biden and Harris strategies have produced more winners than the Warren one, although all three approaches are viable. That doesn’t mean that Biden, Harris and Warren are the only candidates pursuing these strategies. Cory Booker’s coalition could look a lot like Harris’s, for instance, were he ever to gain traction. But they’re the only candidates who are both (a) taking approaches that have worked well in the past and (b) polling reasonably well at the moment. That puts them in the top tier.

How you would rank them within the top tier is harder. But we should probably start with the fact that Biden is still ahead of the other two in the polls. It’s closer in early state polls, and it’s closer once you account for the fact that Harris and Warren still aren’t as well-known as Biden is. But Biden’s lead is nontrivial — he’s ahead of Harris by 12 percentage points (and Warren by 13) in the RealClearPolitics average.

And while you might claim that Harris and Warren have momentum, you need to be careful with that. Often, polling bounces from debates and other events fade, so it’s at least possible that Harris and Warren are at their high-water marks. Or not. But Biden is (POKER ANALOGY ALERT!) a bit like a poker player who’s just lost a big pot. Before, he had way more chips than Warren and Harris did; now, he has only slightly more than they do. But you’d still rather be the candidate with more chips than fewer, momentum be damned.

Unless … the way you lost that hand reveals something about your game that could come back to bite you again in the future. Biden wasn’t very effective in the debates, according to the voters we surveyed along with Morning Consult. And some of his decline in the polls has to do with what could be Biden’s two biggest vulnerabilities: his electability halo bursting and voters expressing concern about his age. The age problem isn’t going away. And while Biden can still make an electability case — there are plenty of polls showing him doing better than other Democrats against President Trump — voters are at least likely to scrutinize his argument rather than take it for granted.

Biden and Harris are a fairly clear No. 1 and 2 in endorsements, meanwhile, with Harris having recently picked up a number of endorsements from members of the Congressional Black Caucus, an indicator that coincides with her gaining support among black voters in polls. Warren lags in endorsements, meanwhile. Also, it’s worth noting that whichever candidate wins the plurality of black voters usually wins the Democratic nomination — something that Biden and Harris probably have a better chance of doing than Warren does. For those reasons, I have Biden and Harris a half-step ahead of Warren. That said, I see the dropoff from Biden and Harris to Warren as being considerably smaller than the dropoff from Warren to the rest of the field.

Tier 2: They can win Iowa, but can they win the nomination?

For Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, the data is a lot more mixed.

Let’s start with the good news for Sanders: He’s still roughly tied for second place in most polls. His favorability ratings are pretty good. He had a decent second-quarter fundraising number. He should have a pretty good on-the-ground organization in Iowa and other early states. He potentially has a fairly high floor relative to the other candidates, and voters know what he stands for.

The bad news: His polling is less impressive given his high name recognition; in fact, he’s in a zone (15 percent-ish in the polls with 100 percent name recognition) that’s usually associated with losing candidates. He’s polling worse in Iowa than he is nationally, a bearish indicator given that it should be a strong state for him demographically. He’s failing to win the support of influential progressive groups like MoveOn.org that backed him four years ago, or to receive many endorsements of other kinds. His fundraising totals are underwhelming as compared with the numbers from his best quarters in 2015 and 2016. Warren’s emergence has produced another strong candidate in his lane. And to the extent that age is a consideration for voters, it’s a problem for Sanders as much as it is for Biden.

That’s a pretty long list of negatives to weigh against decent-but-not-great topline polling numbers. And it leaves out what might be the biggest problem of all for Sanders, which is that even if he were to win Iowa — and New Hampshire — that might not slingshot him to the nomination in the way it would for the other candidates. That’s because Sanders doesn’t have a particularly broad coalition. He has some support among black voters but not a ton, he doesn’t perform well with older voters, and he’s alienated enough moderate and pro-establishment Democrats that he’s usually near the top of the list when pollsters ask voters who they don’t want to see win the nomination. Meanwhile, the party establishment probably won’t do him any favors in the event of a campaign that remains undecided late into the race.

I don’t want to go overboard. If you’re comparing Sanders against, say, Booker, all of Sanders’s liabilities aren’t enough to outweigh the fact that Sanders is at 15 percent in the polls and Booker is at just 2 percent. But they do explain why I don’t have Sanders in the same tier as Warren and Harris, who are in a superficially similar position as Sanders is in national polls. None of those candidates are in a position to win the race right now with 15 percent of the vote, but Sanders has the least obvious path toward expanding his coalition.

Buttigieg offers a different mix of positives and negatives. Pluses: the best second-quarter fundraising numbers of any Democrat; high favorability ratings among voters who know him; stronger polling in New Hampshire and Iowa than he has nationally. Minuses: his topline standing in the polls has reverted back to only about 5 percent of the vote as college-educated voters flock to Warren and Harris; his credentials aren’t as impressive as the other leading candidates; his media attention has atrophied from his initial bump to some degree.

And then there’s Buttigieg’s big challenge, which is similar in some respects to Sanders’s: It’s not clear if Buttigieg can build a broad-enough coalition to win the nomination. He has very little support among black or Hispanic voters and relatively little support among non-college Democrats. Is there a niche for college-educated white voters who think Warren and Sanders are too far to the left, but Biden is too old and/or too moderate? Sure, and it’s a niche that probably includes a lot of FiveThirtyEight readers. But it’s not a particularly large niche, and that helps explain why Buttigieg is at 5 percent in the polls instead of 20 or something.

With all that said, a Buttigieg win in Iowa would be expectations-defying enough that it could reset how the media covers him. It could also sway voters who like him, but don’t necessarily have him as their first choice, to overcome their doubts about his campaign.

Tier 3: There’s potential, but these candidates are underachieving — for now

One of the lesser-noticed aspects of polling after the first debates is how several candidates who were deemed to have performed well in the debates by voters didn’t really see their topline numbers improve. That especially holds for Booker and Julian Castro. Both got high marks for their debate performances, and both saw their favorability ratings improve, but they’re still polling at just 1 or 2 percent in the toplines. That ought to read as a bearish signal for Booker, Castro and other candidates in this tier. They can have a good night, and it still isn’t necessarily enough to move the vote choice needle for them.

Perhaps that’s a sign that the top four or five candidates are fairly strong. Biden, Harris, Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg collectively give almost every voter in the Democratic Party something to be happy with. Some of the other candidates are more redundant, meanwhile. A potential Beto O’Rourke voter probably sees a lot of what he likes in O’Rourke in Buttigieg, for instance; or a Booker voter could gravitate toward Harris, instead. So it’s not clear what’s distinctive about what these candidates have to offer to voters, although I should note that Castro is the only Hispanic candidate in the field.

With that said, it’s early, and an alternative way to interpret Harris’s and Warren’s emergence is that serious candidates with good résumés will get their opportunities sooner or later. And Booker, Castro and Amy Klobuchar are all serious, well-credentialed candidates.

O’Rourke is in a slightly different category. He’s a little bit like (BASEBALL ANALOGY ALERT!) a baseball player who gets called up from the minors and surprises everyone by hitting .330 in 100 at-bats in September, only to hit .206 when he’s named the starting third baseman the next season before promptly getting sent back to the minors. What O’Rourke accomplished against Ted Cruz in Texas’s U.S. Senate race in 2018 was genuinely impressive — but he may not get another chance to prove that he wasn’t a flash in the pan.

Related:












Tier 4: These candidates are also running for some reason

Pretty much everyone else is in asterisk territory in the polls, and is raising relatively little money, and so is in danger of missing the third debate in September. To the extent I have any of these candidates ranked ahead of any of the others, it’s pretty much entirely subjective. But I think Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee are well-enough credentialed and have distinctive-enough messages — Gillibrand around women’s issues, Inslee around the environment — that they’re slightly more likely to surge than the others.

Beyond that … I’m deliberately avoiding listing overall percentage chances (i.e. “Biden has an X percent chance of winning the nomination”) until and unless we release a statistical model to forecast the primaries. But just to be clear, once we get down to Tier 4, we’re not talking about candidates with even a 10 or 20 percent chance of winning the nomination. Maybe it’s 1 or 2 percent. Maybe it’s 0.1 or 0.2 percent. Maybe it’s even less than that. I haven’t really thought about it much. The chances are not high, though.

How to differentiate such small probabilities from one another is tricky. But other things being equal, if you’re betting on extreme longshots, you’d probably prefer weird candidates who have higher variance to milquetoast candidates with lower variance. Maybe 98 out of 100 times, Andrew Yang or Tulsi Gabbard fade out after failing to qualify for one of the debates and are never heard from again. But the two times out of 100, it turns out that American politics are way different than we thought — it wouldn’t be the first time! — and their eccentric approach proves to be effective. It’s a weird world where Gabbard becomes the Democratic nominee. But I’m not sure there’s any world where, say, Seth Moulton does.

From ABC News:

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A Better Way To Evaluate NBA Defense

Basketball, in some sense, is fundamentally a shooting game. Shooting isn’t the only important action that takes place on a basketball court, obviously. But if no one kept track of who was taking shots and making buckets, we’d have, at best, an extremely fuzzy impression of which players were actually any good, even if we had access to all their other statistics.

But believe it or not, this had long been the situation when it came to measuring player defense. There are individual defensive statistics such as rebounds and steals, of course. But there’s no direct measure of shooting defense (other than blocks, which account for a relatively small fraction of missed shots). If an opponent gets hot against your team and shoots 53 for 91 en route to scoring 130 points, we know your team defended poorly in the aggregate, but we don’t know which players to blame.

That is, until a few years ago, when the NBA started publishing data on opponents’ shooting. Last regular season, for example, NBA Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert defended a league-high 1,426 shots, according to motion tracking data by Second Spectrum, which identifies the nearest defender on every field goal attempt. Opponents made only 45 percent of those field goal attempts, well below the roughly 49 percent that Second Spectrum estimates “should” have gone in against average defense for a given distance to the basket.

We’ve been obsessed with this opponents’ shooting data for a while, in part because it sometimes seemed to track closely with players who had stronger or weaker defensive reputations than you would infer from other advanced statistics such as Real Plus-Minus. Boston’s Kyrie Irving was regarded as a slightly above-average defender by RPM last year, for instance. But his opponents’ shooting data suggests he’s a big liability instead. On the other hand, Toronto’s Serge Ibaka was an excellent defender based on opponents’ shooting, whereas RPM regards him as just average.

So this year, we decided to evaluate the opponents’ shooting data in a more comprehensive way and incorporate it into our projection system, CARMELO. Just as CARMELO is a goofy backronym (Career-Arc Regression Model Estimator with Local Optimization) that honors one of our favorite players, Carmelo Anthony, we decided to give our new defensive rating a player-centric name, this time in honor of the Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green, who has long been one of the best players in basketball by opponent shooting. So our new rating is called DRAYMOND, which stands for….

Defensive

Rating

Accounting for

Yielding

Minimal

Openness by

Nearest

Defender

All right, so the acronym may or may not catch on. But it does get at one essential discovery we made in playing around with the opponents’ shooting data: the idea of minimizing openness. The main goal of shooting defense, especially in today’s spacing-centric, ball-movement-forward offensive era, is really to minimize the chance of an open shot.

So when I cited Gobert’s numbers earlier in this article, for instance, the most impressive part was not that opponents shot poorly against him, although that helped the Jazz, of course. Rather, it was that he was the nearest defender on so many shots: about 26 shots per 100 possessions that he was on the floor last year1 as compared with a league average of about 17 shots defended per 100 possessions. By contrast, Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook — whom DRAYMOND regards as being vastly overrated by other defensive metrics — was the nearest defender on only 12 shots per 100 possessions. Some of this has to do with Westbrook’s and Gobert’s respective positions — centers naturally defend more shots than guards do, a factor that DRAYMOND corrects for (see below). But even accounting for that, it’s clear that some players are much more impactful defenders than others.

I’m sure you’re curious to see some data, but first, an explanation of how DRAYMOND is calculated. We’ll keep it pretty brief.

As I mentioned above, what we’re really interested in is how much value a defender provides relative to an open shot. That is to say, we generally don’t want to punish a player for happening to be the nearest defender according to the Second Spectrum data. Some defense is generally better than none; if Player X hadn’t defended the shot, it’s possible that no one else would have.2

Through trial and error, we found that DRAYMOND performs best3 if you assume that shooting percentages on open shots are about 8 percentage points higher than against average defense. For instance, if a certain type of above-the-break 3-pointer is made 34 percent of the time against average defense, we’d expect it to go in about 42 percent of the time if it was truly open.

This allows us to calculate an initial score that we call RAW_DRAYMOND. For example, if a player faced 100 2-point shots and allowed 46 of them to go in when you’d expect 56 percent of them to be converted if wide open, that player prevented …

(.56-.46) x 100 x 2 = 20

… about 20 points from being scored with his defense. (Obviously, this player could have provided additional value based on his defense against 3-point shots. Indeed, since 3-point shots are worth more than 2-pointers — hashtag #math — players who are effective at defending threes are especially rewarded by DRAYMOND.)

However, there are several adjustments we need to make in getting from RAW_DRAYMOND to regular DRAYMOND:

Since DRAYMOND is based on both regular-season and playoff data, we adjust for the fact that defenders face slightly tougher shooters on average in the playoffs.
We divide RAW_DRAYMOND by the number of possessions that the player was on the floor, so that DRAYMOND (like RPM and most other NBA stats) is a rate statistic rather than a counting statistic.
We adjust the number of shots defended based on a player’s position. The average point guard and shooting guard defends about 15 shots per 100 possessions, the average small forward defends about 16 shots, the average power forward 19 shots, and the average center 22 shots.4 This somewhat equalizes defensive value over the five positions. Even so, bigs are generally the most valuable defenders in basketball according to DRAYMOND, as they are under most other advanced statistics.
Finally, we subtract the value of league-average shooting defense per possession from each player’s score. Thus, like RPM and Box Plus/Minus (BPM), the statistics that CARMELO has traditionally used to make its projections, DRAYMOND is a plus-minus statistic measured per 100 possessions, where a score of 0 represents average defense.

Among players who have played at least 10,000 possessions over the past six seasons (the NBA’s opponents’ shooting data goes back to 2013-14), the top defender according to DRAYMOND is … Draymond Green, who has provided the Warriors with +3.2 points per 100 possessions of defensive value based on his scoring defense alone, not counting all of the other ways (e.g., steals) that he produces defensive value. Green is followed on the list by a fairly star-studded cast of defenders: Joel Embiid, Kristaps Porzingis (!), Rudy Gobert, Tim Duncan, Andre Roberson and Anthony Davis. Meanwhile, the worst-rated defender over the past six seasons according to DRAYMOND is Rajon Rondo.

The best defender according to DRAYMOND is Draymond

NBA players by DRAYMOND* defensive ratings, based on opponents’ shooting data in the regular season and playoffs, with a minimum of 10,000 possessions played since 2013-14

Player
Possessions played
DRAYMOND RATING




Draymond Green
38,282
+3.16


Joel Embiid
11,766
+2.95


Kristaps Porzingis
11,714
+2.57


Rudy Gobert
24,889
+2.40


Tim Duncan
14,218
+2.20


Andre Roberson
15,147
+2.06


Anthony Davis
30,484
+2.05


Andrew Bogut
13,887
+2.01


Roy Hibbert
14,695
+1.92


Josh Smith
13,122
+1.90


Hassan Whiteside
18,508
+1.87


Derrick Favors
24,324
+1.86


Myles Turner
17,509
+1.73


Aron Baynes
14,484
+1.71


Joakim Noah
15,511
+1.60


Brook Lopez
25,200
+1.60


Timofey Mozgov
14,696
+1.57


Luc Mbah a Moute
16,502
+1.56


Serge Ibaka
32,865
+1.54


Kyle O’Quinn
11,843
+1.52


Montrezl Harrell
11,001
+1.44


Kevin Durant
35,683
+1.44


Robin Lopez
25,657
+1.43


Al Horford
30,395
+1.41


David West
17,671
+1.40


Clint Capela
18,110
+1.39


Pau Gasol
23,255
+1.38


James Johnson
17,746
+1.33


Josh Richardson
17,276
+1.28


LaMarcus Aldridge
33,382
+1.27


Dewayne Dedmon
13,581
+1.25


Jaylen Brown
13,507
+1.25


Jusuf Nurkic
15,099
+1.24


Giannis Antetokounmpo
33,511
+1.23


Nemanja Bjelica
11,568
+1.15


John Henson
15,221
+1.14


Danny Green
28,467
+1.12


Kosta Koufos
15,534
+1.11


Jerami Grant
20,433
+1.10


Ben Simmons
13,358
+1.10


Steven Adams
28,973
+1.09


Tyler Zeller
11,412
+1.09


Mike Dunleavy
12,931
+1.08


Klay Thompson
41,713
+1.05


Tony Allen
14,520
+1.04


Miles Plumlee
11,556
+1.04


DeMarcus Cousins
24,075
+1.00


Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
17,801
+0.99


Justise Winslow
14,191
+0.97


Raymond Felton
16,949
+0.97


Taj Gibson
26,231
+0.96


DeAndre Jordan
34,072
+0.96


Thabo Sefolosha
16,186
+0.95


Kawhi Leonard
27,674
+0.88


Ian Mahinmi
14,184
+0.88


Pascal Siakam
12,798
+0.88


Solomon Hill
14,891
+0.87


Jonas Valanciunas
23,901
+0.85


Marcin Gortat
28,529
+0.84


Kemba Walker
33,021
+0.81


Jrue Holiday
25,597
+0.80


Shaun Livingston
21,495
+0.79


Spencer Hawes
11,803
+0.78


Bismack Biyombo
17,520
+0.78


Maurice Harkless
20,198
+0.77


Wilson Chandler
21,126
+0.76


Amir Johnson
20,436
+0.75


Trevor Booker
16,039
+0.72


Cody Zeller
17,321
+0.72


Alex Len
17,616
+0.71


Marc Gasol
30,496
+0.71


David Lee
12,774
+0.67


George Hill
26,013
+0.64


Langston Galloway
15,734
+0.62


Quincy Acy
10,497
+0.61


Evan Turner
27,518
+0.61


Dwight Powell
12,343
+0.59


Paul Pierce
12,678
+0.59


Cory Joseph
23,771
+0.57


Nikola Mirotic
18,138
+0.57


Jimmy Butler
32,597
+0.54


Jayson Tatum
12,138
+0.53


James Harden
40,828
+0.52


Nerlens Noel
14,418
+0.51


Noah Vonleh
11,214
+0.47


Derrick Rose
17,293
+0.47


Patrick Patterson
21,197
+0.47


Jeremy Lin
18,390
+0.46


Dion Waiters
21,066
+0.45


Domantas Sabonis
11,443
+0.44


Ed Davis
17,428
+0.43


Jared Dudley
18,767
+0.42


Goran Dragic
28,790
+0.41


Aaron Gordon
20,045
+0.40


Marreese Speights
11,425
+0.40


Paul Millsap
30,217
+0.39


CJ McCollum
28,793
+0.38


Justin Holiday
16,591
+0.38


Eric Bledsoe
26,635
+0.36


Tristan Thompson
27,936
+0.36


Jared Sullinger
11,886
+0.35


Trey Lyles
10,302
+0.34


Paul George
32,598
+0.33


Allen Crabbe
18,711
+0.33


Lance Thomas
12,142
+0.32


Gerald Henderson
16,500
+0.31


Tyler Johnson
15,111
+0.30


DeMarre Carroll
26,019
+0.29


Stephen Curry
39,307
+0.27


Mike Conley
23,955
+0.23


Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
12,081
+0.21


Mason Plumlee
22,777
+0.21


Dwight Howard
24,588
+0.20


LeBron James
39,997
+0.19


Rudy Gay
24,069
+0.19


JaMychal Green
14,173
+0.18


Patrick Beverley
22,626
+0.17


Blake Griffin
29,325
+0.16


Nikola Vucevic
26,406
+0.16


Damian Lillard
38,628
+0.16


Jae Crowder
27,620
+0.16


Matthew Dellavedova
18,129
+0.16


Kent Bazemore
22,184
+0.16


Mario Chalmers
15,652
+0.15


Luol Deng
18,725
+0.15


Jonas Jerebko
15,123
+0.14


Markieff Morris
26,032
+0.12


Andre Iguodala
29,712
+0.11


Omer Asik
10,195
+0.11


JJ Redick
29,725
+0.10


Anthony Tolliver
17,263
+0.08


Manu Ginobili
16,974
+0.08


Dwyane Wade
25,627
+0.08


PJ Tucker
32,880
+0.08


Austin Rivers
23,087
+0.07


Spencer Dinwiddie
13,248
+0.07


John Wall
31,634
+0.07


Karl-Anthony Towns
23,043
+0.07


Ish Smith
19,446
+0.07


Wesley Matthews
30,095
+0.06


Jeremy Lamb
18,210
+0.06


Chris Bosh
12,709
+0.06


Marvin Williams
25,849
+0.06


Kyle Anderson
12,802
+0.05


Jason Smith
11,230
+0.05


Donovan Mitchell
12,171
+0.04


Isaiah Thomas
23,565
+0.04


Al-Farouq Aminu
26,956
+0.03


CJ Miles
17,938
+0.03


Terry Rozier
13,805
+0.03


Kyle Lowry
35,784
+0.02


Marcus Morris
28,223
+0.02


Reggie Bullock
10,929
+0.01


Gerald Green
18,429
+0.00


Dario Saric
14,499
+0.00


Andre Drummond
31,709
+0.00


Marcus Smart
22,997
+0.00


Terrence Jones
12,064
+0.00


Kelly Olynyk
20,609
-0.01


Brandon Bass
12,616
-0.02


Courtney Lee
25,321
-0.02


Khris Middleton
30,940
-0.03


Jerian Grant
10,248
-0.03


Terrence Ross
23,139
-0.03


Nene
16,100
-0.03


T.J. McConnell
15,302
-0.03


Michael Carter-Williams
17,756
-0.03


Boris Diaw
15,683
-0.04


Jarrett Jack
14,572
-0.05


Malcolm Brogdon
12,073
-0.06


Kyle Kuzma
10,183
-0.06


Mike Muscala
10,947
-0.07


Brandon Ingram
12,815
-0.07


Robert Covington
21,084
-0.07


Vince Carter
18,232
-0.09


Tyson Chandler
18,693
-0.09


Meyers Leonard
10,837
-0.10


Matt Barnes
18,283
-0.10


Tony Snell
20,715
-0.13


Jeff Teague
29,994
-0.13


Nicolas Batum
31,707
-0.13


Bradley Beal
34,063
-0.14


Al Jefferson
14,574
-0.15


Garrett Temple
18,146
-0.15


Aaron Brooks
11,764
-0.17


Iman Shumpert
20,064
-0.17


Willie Cauley-Stein
14,903
-0.17


Enes Kanter
24,020
-0.18


Joe Harris
13,015
-0.19


Bobby Portis
10,791
-0.20


Hollis Thompson
13,414
-0.21


Wesley Johnson
19,012
-0.22


Thaddeus Young
31,870
-0.22


Mirza Teletovic
11,261
-0.22


Jeff Green
28,433
-0.23


Gordon Hayward
26,388
-0.23


Kevin Love
28,026
-0.24


Stanley Johnson
12,913
-0.25


Omri Casspi
13,641
-0.25


Luis Scola
11,128
-0.26


Eric Gordon
28,024
-0.26


Harrison Barnes
33,280
-0.28


Kyle Korver
28,624
-0.28


Nikola Jokic
19,092
-0.29


Devin Harris
15,894
-0.29


Victor Oladipo
28,135
-0.29


Deron Williams
17,520
-0.31


Tobias Harris
31,349
-0.31


Monta Ellis
22,806
-0.32


Jerryd Bayless
13,461
-0.32


Randy Foye
13,985
-0.32


Jason Terry
13,194
-0.32


Dennis Schroder
23,921
-0.33


Zaza Pachulia
17,765
-0.33


Mike Scott
15,790
-0.34


Richard Jefferson
14,457
-0.35


Trey Burke
17,019
-0.36


Dirk Nowitzki
24,696
-0.37


Joe Ingles
22,212
-0.37


Ian Clark
10,859
-0.39


Chandler Parsons
18,098
-0.40


Isaiah Canaan
10,149
-0.40


Tyreke Evans
18,965
-0.40


Ersan Ilyasova
21,881
-0.41


Jordan Hill
10,087
-0.45


Darren Collison
25,990
-0.46


Jodie Meeks
12,673
-0.47


E’Twaun Moore
19,870
-0.48


Larry Nance Jr.
12,949
-0.49


Shelvin Mack
15,274
-0.49


Shane Larkin
10,117
-0.49


Patty Mills
23,097
-0.51


Joe Johnson
25,036
-0.52


Tim Hardaway Jr.
22,178
-0.52


Ryan Anderson
18,873
-0.52


Lance Stephenson
20,349
-0.52


Norman Powell
10,579
-0.53


Kyle Singler
11,355
-0.53


Will Barton
20,048
-0.54


Avery Bradley
26,335
-0.54


T.J. Warren
15,353
-0.55


Tony Parker
22,184
-0.55


Mario Hezonja
10,871
-0.56


Greg Monroe
21,907
-0.56


Nik Stauskas
13,971
-0.56


Danilo Gallinari
17,302
-0.57


Jon Leuer
10,751
-0.57


Chris Paul
31,344
-0.58


James Ennis III
12,375
-0.59


Carmelo Anthony
24,805
-0.59


Andrew Wiggins
29,659
-0.60


Taurean Prince
11,091
-0.62


Rodney Hood
19,067
-0.62


Ramon Sessions
13,288
-0.62


Rodney Stuckey
11,918
-0.63


Gary Harris
19,416
-0.64


JR Smith
25,891
-0.64


Channing Frye
16,675
-0.65


Corey Brewer
21,400
-0.67


Reggie Jackson
25,636
-0.67


Wayne Ellington
17,863
-0.68


Frank Kaminsky
13,278
-0.69


Arron Afflalo
19,467
-0.71


Julius Randle
18,720
-0.72


Doug McDermott
14,334
-0.74


Bojan Bogdanovic
24,638
-0.74


Elfrid Payton
21,014
-0.78


Buddy Hield
13,734
-0.78


Jamal Murray
15,101
-0.79


Brandon Knight
16,757
-0.80


Devin Booker
19,065
-0.80


Lou Williams
26,587
-0.81


Gorgui Dieng
21,118
-0.82


Kenneth Faried
17,635
-0.82


Derrick Williams
11,367
-0.83


Zach Randolph
21,896
-0.84


DeMar DeRozan
36,103
-0.85


Evan Fournier
25,823
-0.85


Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
29,067
-0.88


D’Angelo Russell
16,686
-0.90


Emmanuel Mudiay
13,309
-0.90


Ben McLemore
17,957
-0.94


Norris Cole
11,175
-0.97


Jameer Nelson
15,646
-0.97


Kyrie Irving
31,938
-0.99


Ricky Rubio
26,045
-0.99


Jordan Clarkson
22,324
-1.03


Otto Porter Jr.
24,148
-1.03


Russell Westbrook
35,302
-1.04


Jonathon Simmons
11,869
-1.05


Kelly Oubre Jr.
14,377
-1.08


Brandon Jennings
14,286
-1.16


Dante Cunningham
19,597
-1.17


Anthony Morrow
10,184
-1.18


Marco Belinelli
23,994
-1.19


D.J. Augustin
22,122
-1.22


Jabari Parker
15,480
-1.24


Trevor Ariza
37,477
-1.25


J.J. Barea
16,230
-1.25


Nick Young
14,675
-1.26


Jamal Crawford
25,169
-1.28


Ty Lawson
17,022
-1.31


Zach LaVine
17,990
-1.36


Alec Burks
14,268
-1.49


Jose Calderon
16,539
-1.54


Rajon Rondo
22,941
-1.55

* Defensive Rating Accounting for Yielding Minimal Openness by Nearest Defender

And here’s the data for last season (2018-19), with a minimum of 2,000 possessions defended. The Jazz’s Derrick Favors was the top defender, followed by the Knicks’ Mitchell Robinson, while the Cavaliers’ Collin Sexton was the worst defender in the league.

The best DRAYMOND defenders of 2018-19

NBA players by DRAYMOND* defensive ratings, based on opponents’ shooting data in the regular season and playoffs, with a minimum of 2,000 possessions played in 2018-19

Player
Possessions played
DRAYMOND RATING




Derrick Favors
4,036
+3.74


Mitchell Robinson
2,882
+3.32


Derrick Jones Jr.
2,389
+3.10


Jusuf Nurkic
4,212
+3.03


Maxi Kleber
3,168
+2.94


Hassan Whiteside
3,490
+2.89


Rudy Gobert
5,786
+2.82


Kevon Looney
4,145
+2.72


Serge Ibaka
5,258
+2.63


Richaun Holmes
2,558
+2.54


Brook Lopez
6,040
+2.53


Myles Turner
4,656
+2.43


Ivica Zubac
2,365
+2.43


Joel Embiid
5,419
+2.40


Robin Lopez
3,387
+2.35


Torrey Craig
3,798
+2.33


Jonas Valanciunas
2,345
+2.25


Evan Turner
3,896
+2.23


Bruce Brown
3,135
+2.21


James Johnson
2,419
+2.19


Aron Baynes
2,033
+2.17


JaVale McGee
3,690
+2.17


Nerlens Noel
2,437
+2.15


Giannis Antetokounmpo
6,339
+2.13


Shabazz Napier
2,193
+1.92


Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
2,511
+1.92


Pat Connaughton
3,493
+1.90


Montrezl Harrell
5,060
+1.82


LaMarcus Aldridge
6,012
+1.82


Draymond Green
6,260
+1.76


Nemanja Bjelica
3,950
+1.76


Derrick White
3,964
+1.74


Josh Hart
3,796
+1.72


Wes Iwundu
2,757
+1.69


Pascal Siakam
7,195
+1.65


Cody Zeller
2,639
+1.64


Jahlil Okafor
2,039
+1.52


Jaren Jackson Jr.
3,076
+1.51


Kyle Anderson
2,606
+1.50


Gary Harris
4,427
+1.42


Jared Dudley
2,749
+1.40


James Harden
6,754
+1.40


Mason Plumlee
4,086
+1.33


Dorian Finney-Smith
4,200
+1.31


Jayson Tatum
5,809
+1.26


Patrick Beverley
5,029
+1.25


Eric Bledsoe
5,900
+1.23


Al Horford
4,834
+1.18


Jaylen Brown
4,698
+1.18


Anthony Davis
4,014
+1.15


Dennis Smith Jr.
3,200
+1.15


Brandon Ingram
3,850
+1.15


Clint Capela
5,313
+1.13


Cory Joseph
4,489
+1.13


Thon Maker
2,220
+1.11


Dwight Powell
3,524
+1.10


Allen Crabbe
2,444
+1.09


Seth Curry
3,615
+1.03


Andre Drummond
5,709
+1.01


Lonzo Ball
3,122
+1.00


Ben Simmons
6,761
+0.97


D.J. Wilson
2,055
+0.96


Kevin Durant
6,753
+0.94


Markieff Morris
2,863
+0.94


Nikola Vucevic
5,515
+0.94


John Collins
4,039
+0.88


Shaquille Harrison
3,032
+0.88


Malcolm Brogdon
4,463
+0.88


Nikola Jokic
6,263
+0.87


Jarrett Allen
4,774
+0.87


Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
5,090
+0.87


PJ Tucker
6,632
+0.85


DeAndre Jordan
4,300
+0.83


Juancho Hernangomez
2,863
+0.83


Klay Thompson
7,394
+0.80


Steven Adams
6,187
+0.78


Spencer Dinwiddie
4,395
+0.77


Dewayne Dedmon
3,516
+0.76


Royce O’Neale
3,884
+0.75


Marc Gasol
6,448
+0.74


Gordon Hayward
4,582
+0.74


Bam Adebayo
4,006
+0.73


Norman Powell
3,207
+0.71


CJ McCollum
6,340
+0.70


Darius Miller
3,861
+0.70


Jerami Grant
6,093
+0.70


Rudy Gay
4,216
+0.69


Robert Covington
2,548
+0.69


George Hill
3,632
+0.69


Maurice Harkless
3,833
+0.66


Wendell Carter Jr.
2,311
+0.65


Trey Lyles
2,390
+0.64


Jakob Poeltl
3,061
+0.64


Mike Muscala
2,889
+0.64


Jimmy Butler
5,562
+0.62


T.J. McConnell
3,358
+0.62


Nicolas Batum
4,923
+0.62


Kemba Walker
5,962
+0.62


Deandre Ayton
4,645
+0.62


Jonathan Isaac
4,456
+0.61


Paul Millsap
4,866
+0.59


Kyle Lowry
6,510
+0.57


Trey Burke
2,387
+0.57


Josh Jackson
4,267
+0.56


Karl-Anthony Towns
5,392
+0.53


Andre Iguodala
4,742
+0.52


Zach Collins
3,419
+0.49


Emmanuel Mudiay
3,418
+0.48


Eric Gordon
5,347
+0.45


Delon Wright
3,611
+0.43


Avery Bradley
4,044
+0.42


Damian Lillard
7,338
+0.40


Alex Len
3,489
+0.40


LeBron James
4,228
+0.40


Danuel House Jr.
2,369
+0.40


Nikola Mirotic
3,444
+0.39


Ish Smith
2,763
+0.39


Mike Conley
4,816
+0.38


Tyreke Evans
3,134
+0.35


Dwyane Wade
4,006
+0.34


Jae Crowder
4,940
+0.34


Daniel Theis
2,061
+0.34


D’Angelo Russell
5,600
+0.33


Justin Holiday
5,432
+0.31


Terry Rozier
4,133
+0.30


Rodions Kurucs
3,041
+0.28


Derrick Rose
3,020
+0.27


Kawhi Leonard
6,178
+0.25


Langston Galloway
3,888
+0.24


Jrue Holiday
5,233
+0.24


Larry Nance Jr.
3,684
+0.23


Elfrid Payton
2,778
+0.23


Ed Davis
3,157
+0.23


Domantas Sabonis
4,021
+0.22


Thomas Bryant
3,241
+0.17


Josh Richardson
5,296
+0.16


Andrew Wiggins
5,400
+0.14


Davis Bertans
3,653
+0.12


Rodney Hood
4,642
+0.12


Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
2,847
+0.11


Goran Dragic
2,134
+0.11


Tony Snell
2,947
+0.11


Austin Rivers
4,753
+0.11


Dario Saric
4,371
+0.11


Paul George
6,639
+0.09


Kenrich Williams
2,390
+0.09


Noah Vonleh
3,662
+0.08


Danny Green
6,093
+0.08


Fred VanVleet
4,882
+0.08


Shaun Livingston
2,710
+0.08


Rodney McGruder
3,272
+0.03


Joe Harris
5,271
+0.02


Wayne Ellington
2,965
+0.02


Enes Kanter
4,397
+0.01


Marcus Smart
4,760
-0.01


Cheick Diallo
2,016
-0.02


Landry Shamet
4,303
-0.05


OG Anunoby
2,920
-0.05


Aaron Gordon
5,817
-0.06


Jeff Teague
2,695
-0.07


Thaddeus Young
5,391
-0.08


Justin Jackson
3,505
-0.16


Tyler Johnson
3,241
-0.17


De’Aaron Fox
5,626
-0.17


Khris Middleton
6,334
-0.19


Ersan Ilyasova
3,315
-0.20


Kelly Olynyk
3,795
-0.21


Buddy Hield
5,744
-0.22


Alfonzo McKinnie
2,709
-0.22


Tobias Harris
6,998
-0.24


Ryan Arcidiacono
4,105
-0.25


Kyle Kuzma
5,063
-0.25


Jake Layman
2,861
-0.25


Tristan Thompson
2,445
-0.25


Sterling Brown
2,651
-0.29


Marvin Bagley III
3,418
-0.30


Garrett Temple
4,386
-0.31


Bojan Bogdanovic
5,659
-0.32


David Nwaba
2,034
-0.32


Mike Scott
3,520
-0.32


Marcus Morris
5,009
-0.33


Terrance Ferguson
4,504
-0.33


Wilson Chandler
2,670
-0.33


Willie Cauley-Stein
4,851
-0.37


Dion Waiters
2,334
-0.38


Jordan Clarkson
4,606
-0.40


Jabari Parker
3,713
-0.40


Anthony Tolliver
2,328
-0.40


Justise Winslow
4,093
-0.41


Julius Randle
4,889
-0.41


De’Anthony Melton
2,112
-0.41


Stephen Curry
6,852
-0.42


Dennis Schroder
5,385
-0.42


Kris Dunn
2,898
-0.42


Harrison Barnes
5,415
-0.42


Ante Zizic
2,259
-0.44


JJ Redick
6,068
-0.44


Doug McDermott
2,906
-0.45


Taj Gibson
3,607
-0.47


Bogdan Bogdanovic
4,205
-0.48


Jamal Murray
6,100
-0.53


DeMarre Carroll
3,942
-0.54


Stanley Johnson
2,607
-0.54


Marco Belinelli
4,179
-0.55


Jonas Jerebko
2,863
-0.56


Kelly Oubre Jr.
4,215
-0.56


Evan Fournier
5,642
-0.56


Gorgui Dieng
2,247
-0.59


Blake Griffin
5,538
-0.61


Monte Morris
4,561
-0.62


Danilo Gallinari
4,818
-0.65


JaMychal Green
3,244
-0.66


Jeff Green
4,501
-0.67


Jonathon Simmons
2,408
-0.79


Bradley Beal
6,505
-0.80


Luka Doncic
4,912
-0.81


Lauri Markkanen
3,496
-0.81


Iman Shumpert
3,455
-0.83


Zach LaVine
4,547
-0.83


Russell Westbrook
6,193
-0.84


Tony Parker
2,145
-0.85


Devin Harris
2,267
-0.85


Elie Okobo
2,040
-0.85


Reggie Bullock
3,974
-0.86


Chris Paul
4,743
-0.89


Allonzo Trier
3,104
-0.90


John Wall
2,404
-0.91


Yogi Ferrell
2,330
-0.92


Al-Farouq Aminu
5,689
-0.92


Devin Booker
4,792
-0.93


Jeremy Lamb
4,710
-0.93


Jalen Brunson
3,346
-0.94


DeMar DeRozan
6,023
-0.96


Patty Mills
4,431
-0.96


Caris LeVert
2,593
-0.97


Mikal Bridges
5,176
-0.98


Jerian Grant
2,016
-0.99


DeAndre’ Bembry
4,311
-1.00


Will Barton
3,155
-1.00


Vince Carter
2,998
-1.00


Wesley Matthews
4,656
-1.01


Kyrie Irving
5,434
-1.01


Alec Burks
2,874
-1.06


Tomas Satoransky
4,634
-1.07


Kent Bazemore
3,658
-1.07


Donovan Mitchell
5,923
-1.08


Cedi Osman
5,021
-1.10


Otto Porter Jr.
3,634
-1.14


Terrence Ross
4,804
-1.14


Taurean Prince
3,462
-1.14


Tim Hardaway Jr.
4,345
-1.16


Joe Ingles
5,832
-1.17


Lance Stephenson
2,511
-1.20


Luke Kennard
3,218
-1.21


Mario Hezonja
2,549
-1.22


Marvin Williams
4,467
-1.22


Miles Bridges
3,625
-1.35


Damyean Dotson
4,241
-1.36


Kevin Knox
4,596
-1.42


Gerald Green
3,324
-1.43


E’Twaun Moore
3,187
-1.44


Darren Collison
4,693
-1.44


Ricky Rubio
4,414
-1.44


Josh Okogie
3,830
-1.45


Wayne Selden
3,048
-1.49


Bobby Portis
2,773
-1.50


Lou Williams
4,812
-1.67


Shelvin Mack
2,577
-1.69


D.J. Augustin
4,990
-1.77


Rajon Rondo
2,992
-1.79


Tyus Jones
3,348
-1.79


Reggie Jackson
4,971
-1.82


Bryn Forbes
5,200
-1.82


Trae Young
5,570
-1.83


Victor Oladipo
2,362
-1.84


Malik Beasley
4,532
-1.88


Ian Clark
2,165
-1.95


Jeremy Lin
3,270
-1.96


Malik Monk
2,703
-1.98


Frank Jackson
2,628
-2.10


Quinn Cook
2,649
-2.11


Nik Stauskas
2,164
-2.23


T.J. Warren
2,895
-2.27


Kyle Korver
2,966
-2.29


Meyers Leonard
2,212
-2.31


Jamal Crawford
2,647
-2.40


Kevin Huerter
4,544
-2.46


Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
4,447
-2.49


James Ennis III
3,105
-2.68


Tim Frazier
2,554
-3.01


Trevor Ariza
4,997
-3.25


Collin Sexton
5,374
-3.59

* Defensive Rating Accounting for Yielding Minimal Openness by Nearest Defender

You can download a complete set of DRAYMOND data dating back to 2013-14 at this link.

But does DRAYMOND measure something that’s actually meaningful? To test this — and I have to apologize because there are a lot of similarly named statistics here with confusing acronyms — we regressed DRAYMOND and defensive BPM5 against five-year defensive Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM). What the hell does that mean? BPM is based on conventional box score statistics — most importantly rebounds, blocks and steals for the purposes of measuring defense. DRAYMOND is based on opponents’ shooting. RAPM, meanwhile, measures how much better or worse a team plays when a player is on or off the floor. In the long run, RAPM is basically6 the “right” way to measure player value, since it can account for all the direct and indirect contributions a player makes that may or may not have a corresponding statistic attached to them. In the short run and even the medium run, however (remember all that misleading data people cited about how the Warriors were so good without Kevin Durant?), RAPM can be extremely noisy. So RAPM is great if you’re looking back over a five-year sample, as we’re doing here, but on-court/off-court statistics need to be treated with extreme caution over small samples.

In any event, what we found is that BPM and DRAYMOND basically do equally well in predicting long-term RAPM. What that means is that the opponents’ shooting data is basically as powerful as all box score defensive statistics combined in predicting how much value a player’s defense truly has over the long run.

We also found, however, that BPM and DRAYMOND are largely not redundant with one another. Blocks, steals and rebounds, which BPM captures, are certainly valuable things, and DRAYMOND does not purport to measure those. But they are also not especially good proxies for shooting defense. There are some players such as Green and Gobert who are even better defenders than you’d gather from their box score stats, even though those stats are pretty good. But there are others like Trevor Ariza, who gets lots of steals but has been rated poorly by DRAYMOND in recent seasons. That doesn’t mean that Ariza is a poor defender, just that you need to take the good (steals) with the bad (allows opponents to convert field goals at a high rate) when evaluating him.

Let’s conclude with a list of players who are most affected, positively or negatively, by the incorporation of DRAYMOND. The table below compares our old CARMELO defensive ratings, which were based on a mix of two-thirds RPM and one-third BPM, to our new version, which still uses these statistics but also uses DRAYMOND.7 Here are the old and new defensive ratings for everyone with at least 10,000 possessions played since 2013-14.

Which players’ defense had been underrated or overrated?

Change in CARMELO defensive ratings since 2013-14 after incorporating DRAYMOND*, for players with a minimum of 10,000 possessions

CARMELO DEFENSIVE RATING



Player
Old (based on RPM and BPM)
New (incorporating DRAYMOND)
Net Change




Kristaps Porzingis
+1.50
+2.65
+1.15


Joel Embiid
+3.16
+4.17
+1.01


Nemanja Bjelica
+0.86
+1.68
+0.82


Josh Smith
+1.60
+2.39
+0.80


Brook Lopez
+1.22
+2.00
+0.78


Timofey Mozgov
+1.38
+2.11
+0.72


Anthony Davis
+2.85
+3.56
+0.71


Kemba Walker
-0.80
-0.10
+0.70


Aron Baynes
+1.82
+2.49
+0.66


Draymond Green
+4.43
+5.09
+0.66


Isaiah Thomas
-2.62
-1.99
+0.63


Luc Mbah a Moute
+1.59
+2.21
+0.62


Raymond Felton
-0.74
-0.13
+0.61


Montrezl Harrell
-0.05
+0.56
+0.61


Derrick Favors
+2.03
+2.63
+0.61


Wilson Chandler
-0.75
-0.15
+0.60


Andre Roberson
+2.47
+3.07
+0.60


Jaylen Brown
+0.11
+0.71
+0.60


Dewayne Dedmon
+2.04
+2.62
+0.59


Klay Thompson
-0.91
-0.34
+0.57


Tyler Zeller
+0.62
+1.19
+0.57


Matthew Dellavedova
-1.16
-0.60
+0.56


Jerami Grant
+0.27
+0.82
+0.55


Jrue Holiday
+0.72
+1.25
+0.54


Langston Galloway
-0.81
-0.30
+0.51


Mirza Teletovic
-1.67
-1.20
+0.47


Kevin Durant
+0.57
+1.03
+0.46


Jeremy Lin
-0.41
+0.04
+0.45


Robin Lopez
+1.24
+1.68
+0.44


Mike Conley
-0.38
+0.06
+0.44


LaMarcus Aldridge
+1.19
+1.62
+0.43


Rudy Gobert
+4.66
+5.09
+0.43


Derrick Rose
-2.11
-1.68
+0.43


Kosta Koufos
+1.57
+1.99
+0.42


JJ Redick
-1.66
-1.25
+0.41


Quincy Acy
-0.21
+0.19
+0.39


Serge Ibaka
+1.53
+1.92
+0.39


Gerald Green
-1.82
-1.44
+0.38


Myles Turner
+2.35
+2.72
+0.37


Roy Hibbert
+2.34
+2.71
+0.36


Clint Capela
+2.18
+2.54
+0.36


Trey Burke
-2.72
-2.36
+0.36


Spencer Hawes
+0.77
+1.12
+0.36


Eric Gordon
-1.76
-1.41
+0.35


Isaiah Canaan
-2.13
-1.79
+0.34


Jonas Valanciunas
+0.57
+0.91
+0.34


Hassan Whiteside
+2.74
+3.08
+0.34


Alex Len
+1.05
+1.38
+0.33


Josh Richardson
+0.43
+0.75
+0.32


Goran Dragic
-0.92
-0.61
+0.32


James Harden
-0.33
-0.02
+0.31


Anthony Tolliver
-0.28
+0.02
+0.31


Hollis Thompson
-2.08
-1.77
+0.31


Bradley Beal
-0.95
-0.64
+0.30


Trey Lyles
-0.46
-0.16
+0.30


Miles Plumlee
+0.85
+1.15
+0.30


CJ McCollum
-1.18
-0.89
+0.29


Dion Waiters
-1.16
-0.87
+0.29


James Johnson
+1.49
+1.78
+0.29


Mike Dunleavy
+0.89
+1.17
+0.29


Tim Duncan
+4.86
+5.14
+0.28


Ryan Anderson
-1.85
-1.57
+0.28


Mario Chalmers
+0.25
+0.53
+0.28


Lance Thomas
-1.01
-0.75
+0.26


Jarrett Jack
-1.23
-0.98
+0.25


Paul Pierce
+0.83
+1.08
+0.25


Aaron Gordon
+0.27
+0.52
+0.25


Devin Booker
-2.76
-2.51
+0.25


Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
+1.66
+1.91
+0.25


Andrew Wiggins
-2.06
-1.82
+0.24


Marreese Speights
-0.54
-0.31
+0.23


Spencer Dinwiddie
-1.30
-1.07
+0.23


CJ Miles
-0.86
-0.63
+0.23


Taj Gibson
+1.23
+1.45
+0.22


Ish Smith
-0.57
-0.35
+0.22


Al Horford
+2.23
+2.45
+0.22


Reggie Bullock
-0.91
-0.69
+0.22


Dwight Powell
+1.04
+1.26
+0.22


Jeff Teague
-0.75
-0.53
+0.22


Austin Rivers
-1.70
-1.49
+0.21


Cory Joseph
-0.15
+0.06
+0.21


Terrence Ross
-1.48
-1.27
+0.20


Steven Adams
+1.61
+1.81
+0.19


Jared Dudley
+0.88
+1.07
+0.19


Dennis Schroder
-2.10
-1.91
+0.19


Justin Holiday
-0.09
+0.09
+0.18


Damian Lillard
-1.27
-1.08
+0.18


Jeff Green
-0.99
-0.81
+0.18


Lou Williams
-2.83
-2.64
+0.18


Jerian Grant
-0.75
-0.57
+0.18


Patrick Patterson
+0.14
+0.31
+0.18


Deron Williams
-0.92
-0.74
+0.17


Vince Carter
+0.26
+0.44
+0.17


John Wall
+0.10
+0.27
+0.17


Eric Bledsoe
+0.81
+0.98
+0.17


Marcin Gortat
+2.26
+2.42
+0.16


Tim Hardaway Jr.
-2.23
-2.07
+0.16


Allen Crabbe
-1.50
-1.34
+0.16


Gerald Henderson
-0.76
-0.60
+0.15


George Hill
+0.38
+0.53
+0.15


Jason Smith
-0.44
-0.30
+0.15


Jodie Meeks
-1.90
-1.75
+0.15


Giannis Antetokounmpo
+1.80
+1.94
+0.14


Nikola Mirotic
+0.79
+0.93
+0.14


Jeremy Lamb
-0.32
-0.18
+0.13


Solomon Hill
+0.29
+0.42
+0.13


Devin Harris
-0.80
-0.67
+0.13


Jason Terry
-0.54
-0.42
+0.12


Brandon Knight
-2.13
-2.01
+0.12


Danny Green
+2.20
+2.32
+0.12


Chris Bosh
+1.14
+1.25
+0.12


John Henson
+1.31
+1.42
+0.12


Rudy Gay
+0.31
+0.42
+0.11


Jordan Clarkson
-2.79
-2.68
+0.11


Wesley Matthews
-0.46
-0.35
+0.11


DeMarcus Cousins
+2.58
+2.68
+0.10


Trevor Booker
+0.47
+0.57
+0.10


Evan Turner
-0.14
-0.04
+0.10


Domantas Sabonis
+0.93
+1.03
+0.09


Bojan Bogdanovic
-2.29
-2.20
+0.09


Aaron Brooks
-2.47
-2.38
+0.09


Markieff Morris
+0.76
+0.85
+0.09


Kyle Kuzma
-1.15
-1.07
+0.08


Bobby Portis
-1.45
-1.37
+0.08


Donovan Mitchell
+0.26
+0.34
+0.08


Kyle O’Quinn
+2.12
+2.20
+0.08


JaMychal Green
-0.39
-0.32
+0.07


Karl-Anthony Towns
+0.31
+0.38
+0.07


Stephen Curry
+0.33
+0.39
+0.06


Darren Collison
-1.34
-1.28
+0.06


Marcus Morris
-0.48
-0.42
+0.06


Khris Middleton
-0.17
-0.11
+0.06


Brandon Ingram
-1.01
-0.95
+0.06


Pau Gasol
+2.16
+2.21
+0.05


Jared Sullinger
+1.24
+1.29
+0.05


DeMarre Carroll
+0.58
+0.63
+0.05


Danilo Gallinari
-0.44
-0.40
+0.05


Nick Young
-2.61
-2.56
+0.05


Brandon Bass
-0.13
-0.08
+0.04


Ramon Sessions
-1.74
-1.70
+0.03


Tony Allen
+2.82
+2.86
+0.03


Enes Kanter
-1.59
-1.55
+0.03


Shaun Livingston
+0.18
+0.21
+0.03


Paul George
+1.30
+1.32
+0.03


Mike Scott
-1.18
-1.15
+0.03


Buddy Hield
-1.61
-1.59
+0.02


Evan Fournier
-1.48
-1.45
+0.02


Wayne Ellington
-1.29
-1.27
+0.02


Jerryd Bayless
-1.88
-1.86
+0.02


Tristan Thompson
+0.17
+0.19
+0.02


Maurice Harkless
+0.41
+0.42
+0.02


Randy Foye
-1.05
-1.04
+0.02


Jonas Jerebko
+0.23
+0.24
+0.02


Joe Harris
-1.57
-1.56
+0.01


Nik Stauskas
-2.08
-2.07
+0.01


Jae Crowder
+0.38
+0.39
+0.01


Malcolm Brogdon
-0.63
-0.62
+0.00


Dario Saric
-0.80
-0.79
+0.00


Dirk Nowitzki
+0.06
+0.05
+0.00


Shane Larkin
-1.12
-1.12
-0.01


Kevin Love
+1.16
+1.15
-0.01


T.J. Warren
-1.66
-1.67
-0.01


Luol Deng
+0.57
+0.56
-0.01


Richard Jefferson
-0.76
-0.77
-0.01


J.J. Barea
-2.39
-2.41
-0.01


Kyle Lowry
+0.89
+0.88
-0.01


Kyle Korver
+0.20
+0.19
-0.02


Zach LaVine
-2.74
-2.76
-0.02


Kawhi Leonard
+2.28
+2.25
-0.03


Courtney Lee
-0.71
-0.75
-0.03


Noah Vonleh
+0.95
+0.91
-0.04


Jimmy Butler
+1.32
+1.28
-0.04


Omri Casspi
-0.11
-0.15
-0.05


Dwyane Wade
-0.55
-0.60
-0.05


Bismack Biyombo
+1.46
+1.40
-0.06


Shelvin Mack
-1.28
-1.34
-0.06


Tony Parker
-1.44
-1.50
-0.06


Cody Zeller
+2.11
+2.05
-0.06


Jusuf Nurkic
+3.25
+3.18
-0.06


Jamal Murray
-1.66
-1.72
-0.07


Garrett Temple
+0.35
+0.28
-0.07


Marvin Williams
+0.59
+0.52
-0.07


Patty Mills
-1.01
-1.08
-0.07


Tyler Johnson
-0.24
-0.31
-0.07


Justise Winslow
+1.41
+1.34
-0.07


Reggie Jackson
-1.15
-1.23
-0.07


Tobias Harris
-0.40
-0.47
-0.07


David West
+2.61
+2.53
-0.08


Amir Johnson
+2.46
+2.38
-0.08


Rodney Hood
-1.25
-1.34
-0.09


Brandon Jennings
-2.44
-2.53
-0.09


Thabo Sefolosha
+2.21
+2.12
-0.09


Pascal Siakam
+1.64
+1.55
-0.09


Patrick Beverley
+0.93
+0.83
-0.09


Gary Harris
-0.94
-1.04
-0.09


Jameer Nelson
-1.84
-1.93
-0.10


Manu Ginobili
+0.71
+0.61
-0.10


Victor Oladipo
+0.85
+0.75
-0.10


Jayson Tatum
+1.44
+1.34
-0.10


David Lee
+1.29
+1.19
-0.10


Tyreke Evans
-0.64
-0.74
-0.10


Kent Bazemore
+0.31
+0.21
-0.11


Michael Carter-Williams
+0.23
+0.12
-0.11


Joe Johnson
-0.91
-1.02
-0.11


Ian Clark
-1.99
-2.10
-0.11


Tony Snell
-0.85
-0.97
-0.11


Doug McDermott
-2.42
-2.53
-0.11


Carmelo Anthony
-1.31
-1.43
-0.11


Nikola Vucevic
+1.83
+1.71
-0.12


Arron Afflalo
-2.24
-2.36
-0.12


Meyers Leonard
-0.31
-0.43
-0.12


D.J. Augustin
-2.33
-2.45
-0.12


Kyle Singler
-0.50
-0.64
-0.14


Marc Gasol
+2.49
+2.36
-0.14


Taurean Prince
-0.69
-0.83
-0.14


Gordon Hayward
-0.11
-0.25
-0.15


Rodney Stuckey
-1.33
-1.47
-0.15


T.J. McConnell
-0.40
-0.55
-0.15


LeBron James
+1.74
+1.58
-0.15


Channing Frye
+0.26
+0.10
-0.16


Mario Hezonja
-1.07
-1.23
-0.16


Emmanuel Mudiay
-2.25
-2.41
-0.17


Will Barton
-0.98
-1.15
-0.17


Blake Griffin
+0.97
+0.80
-0.17


Ersan Ilyasova
-0.23
-0.40
-0.17


Thaddeus Young
+1.19
+1.01
-0.18


Mike Muscala
+0.58
+0.40
-0.18


Avery Bradley
-0.62
-0.80
-0.18


Kelly Olynyk
+0.90
+0.71
-0.18


Monta Ellis
-0.39
-0.58
-0.19


Ben McLemore
-1.15
-1.34
-0.19


Anthony Morrow
-1.67
-1.86
-0.19


D’Angelo Russell
-1.66
-1.86
-0.20


Omer Asik
+1.87
+1.67
-0.20


Ben Simmons
+1.70
+1.49
-0.21


Harrison Barnes
-0.33
-0.54
-0.21


Norris Cole
-1.61
-1.83
-0.21


JR Smith
-0.99
-1.21
-0.22


Matt Barnes
+0.57
+0.34
-0.23


Ian Mahinmi
+3.03
+2.80
-0.23


DeAndre Jordan
+3.11
+2.87
-0.24


Tyson Chandler
+2.47
+2.23
-0.24


Jon Leuer
+0.39
+0.15
-0.24


Derrick Williams
-2.07
-2.32
-0.25


Andrew Bogut
+5.17
+4.92
-0.25


Ed Davis
+1.71
+1.46
-0.25


PJ Tucker
+1.23
+0.98
-0.25


Frank Kaminsky
-0.74
-1.00
-0.25


Terry Rozier
+0.09
-0.17
-0.26


Robert Covington
+2.35
+2.08
-0.26


Jordan Hill
-0.25
-0.52
-0.27


E’Twaun Moore
-1.25
-1.53
-0.28


Nene
+2.73
+2.44
-0.29


Jamal Crawford
-3.25
-3.54
-0.29


Chandler Parsons
-0.00
-0.30
-0.30


Elfrid Payton
-0.35
-0.65
-0.30


Joakim Noah
+3.28
+2.97
-0.30


Marco Belinelli
-2.47
-2.78
-0.31


Corey Brewer
-0.16
-0.46
-0.31


Stanley Johnson
+0.55
+0.25
-0.31


Paul Millsap
+2.64
+2.32
-0.32


Iman Shumpert
+0.80
+0.48
-0.32


Willie Cauley-Stein
+1.24
+0.92
-0.32


Julius Randle
-0.62
-0.94
-0.33


James Ennis III
-0.28
-0.62
-0.34


Dwight Howard
+2.46
+2.12
-0.34


Joe Ingles
+0.83
+0.48
-0.35


Marcus Smart
+1.11
+0.76
-0.35


Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
+1.15
+0.80
-0.35


Kelly Oubre Jr.
-0.95
-1.30
-0.35


Ty Lawson
-1.62
-1.98
-0.36


Terrence Jones
-0.56
-0.93
-0.37


Nicolas Batum
+0.15
-0.22
-0.37


Boris Diaw
+0.73
+0.35
-0.37


Kyrie Irving
-1.42
-1.79
-0.37


DeMar DeRozan
-1.15
-1.55
-0.39


Norman Powell
-0.51
-0.92
-0.41


Wesley Johnson
+0.67
+0.26
-0.41


Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
-0.38
-0.80
-0.42


Ricky Rubio
+1.32
+0.89
-0.42


Al-Farouq Aminu
+1.91
+1.49
-0.43


Chris Paul
+1.46
+1.03
-0.43


Andre Drummond
+1.84
+1.40
-0.44


Luis Scola
+0.30
-0.15
-0.45


Al Jefferson
+0.90
+0.45
-0.46


Zach Randolph
+0.12
-0.34
-0.46


Larry Nance Jr.
+2.01
+1.54
-0.46


Nerlens Noel
+3.36
+2.89
-0.47


Mason Plumlee
+1.40
+0.93
-0.47


Jose Calderon
-1.67
-2.14
-0.48


Greg Monroe
+0.81
+0.32
-0.50


Kenneth Faried
-0.30
-0.82
-0.52


Jabari Parker
-1.46
-1.99
-0.53


Nikola Jokic
+2.62
+2.08
-0.53


Jonathon Simmons
-0.92
-1.47
-0.55


Alec Burks
-1.50
-2.08
-0.58


Lance Stephenson
-0.53
-1.13
-0.59


Andre Iguodala
+1.89
+1.27
-0.61


Gorgui Dieng
+1.66
+1.03
-0.62


Otto Porter Jr.
+0.78
+0.15
-0.63


Zaza Pachulia
+2.47
+1.74
-0.72


Trevor Ariza
+0.78
+0.03
-0.75


Kyle Anderson
+2.91
+2.14
-0.77


Dante Cunningham
-0.05
-0.85
-0.80


Rajon Rondo
-0.21
-1.17
-0.95


Russell Westbrook
+1.16
+0.02
-1.14

* Defensive Rating Accounting for Yielding Minimal Openness by Nearest Defender

These are some pretty interesting lists. Porzingis, Embiid, Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant are among the players whose defense had been most underrated by BPM and RPM. There’s also new Boston Celtics point guard Kemba Walker and, in something of a surprise, former Celtics point guard Isaiah Thomas, who still rates as a pretty terrible defender, just not quite as terrible as before when you incorporate his DRAYMOND data. The most overrated defenders include players such as Westbrook, Rondo, Ariza, Otto Porter Jr. and Nikola Jokic.

Cases such as Thompson and Westbrook are interesting because the conventional wisdom has been way off from where the advanced metrics have them. RPM and BPM say that Westbrook is the much better defensive player, when a lot of NBA general managers might prefer Thompson or at least would regard it as close. But Thompson is a good defender according to DRAYMOND, whereas Westbrook is a wretched one, which closes at least some of the gap. Undoubtedly, there are even better ways to use opponents’ shooting data than what we’ve established with DRAYMOND, but the data ought to be a central part of the conversation about player defense going forward.

Check out our NBA player ratings .

Politics Podcast: Kamala Harris Won The Debate Narrative. What Comes Next?

By Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen and Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen












 












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Sen. Kamala Harris had a strong performance in Thursday’s Democratic primary debate, pressing former Vice President Joe Biden on his record on race relations, while invoking her own experience with school desegregation. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew reacts to the performances of both Harris and Biden, as well as other top contenders from the night.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Politics Podcast: What Happened On Night One Of The First Democratic Debates

By Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Sarah Frostenson and Geoffrey Skelley, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Sarah Frostenson and Geoffrey Skelley, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Sarah Frostenson and Geoffrey Skelley and Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Sarah Frostenson and Geoffrey Skelley












 












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The (first half of the) first Democratic primary debate of the 2020 election cycle is in the books! In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Nate, Sarah, Geoff and Galen react to what appeared to be a strong showing by many of the candidates on stage Wednesday night. We’ll have another podcast for you after Thursday night’s debate.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

What We’re Watching For In The First Democratic Debates

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): The first Democratic primary debates are finally here. And with two back-to-back nights, featuring 10 candidates each, it’ll be a challenge for many candidates to make an impression, especially those hovering around 1 percent in the polls.

For reference, here’s Wednesday’s lineup: Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, Julián Castro, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and John Delaney.

And Thursday’s: Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet and Eric Swalwell.

So let’s talk about the goals we think candidates have for each debate and what we see as the stakes, starting with Wednesday’s lineup.

Sound good?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Sounds great. I can’t believe it’s debate season already — we were watching 2018 election returns come in just seven months ago!

sarahf: Haha. But watching a debate is such a different experience than watching election results trickle in. So, what are you all looking for on night one?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Power ties.

That’s it.

Nothing else.

Listen, I’ll say it up front and then engage more deeply: Presidential debates are not real debates. They are chances for candidates to slot in their talking points. They are pseudo-events — PR opportunities manufactured by parties and news organizations to provide turning points and tension during a long slog. They are only meaningful because we decide to give them meaning. (I will repeat this when we have to cover political conventions.)

But I guess that said, I’m curious to see what the people at the dregs of the polls are going to do with their time and if any of them are impressive. I think for someone like Gillibrand who’s polling poorly but has been in politics for a long time, the debates are a real moment.

nrakich: True, but I will say debates can be meaningful precisely because they are PR opportunities. For many of these candidates, it will be by far the most exposure their talking points have gotten yet.

And maybe, say, Eric Swalwell has really good talking points, and the nation realizes that and he jumps to 7 percent in next week’s polls.

Debates may be theater, but they can also have an impact.

That said, we probably shouldn’t expect the entire landscape of the race to change.

clare.malone: I don’t say my debate piece to be glib. I just think we need to be cognizant of who and what are shaping the presidential election right now.

I’m also curious to see how many people actually tune in. That says a lot.

nrakich: Agreed, and I wonder how this week’s debates will rate. The highest-rated Democratic debate of 2016 had 15.3 million viewers; the highest-rated Republican debate had 24 million.

Republicans drew more eyeballs than Democrats in 2016

Ratings, in millions of viewers, for the 2016 Democratic and Republican prime-time primary debates

Debate

Democrats

Republicans




1st
15.3m

–

24.0m

–



2nd
8.5

–

22.9

–



3rd
7.8

–

14.0

–



4th
10.2

–

13.5

–



5th
4.5

–

18.2

–



6th
8.0

–

11.1

–



7th
5.5

–

12.5

–



8th
6.0

–

13.3

–



9th
5.6

–

13.5

–



10th
—

–

14.5

–



11th
—

–

16.9

–



12th
—

–

11.9

–

Democrats had only nine primary debates in the 2016 cycle.

Sources: News Reports

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): I’m with Clare that it’s going to be interesting to see how the potential also-ran candidates try to have a moment (or moments). There are 20 candidates, 10 in each debate, but most of them are polling below 5 percent if you average all the polls the Democratic National Committee considered for debate qualification.

The second debate features more heavyweight candidates

Combined polling averages of the candidates in each of the first two 2019 Democratic debates

June 26 debate
No. of Polls
Avg
June 27 debate
No. of Polls
Avg




Warren
23
8.7%
Biden
23
29.9%


O’Rourke
23
5.1
Sanders
23
18.3


Booker
23
2.6
Harris
23
7.6


Klobuchar
23
2.0
Buttigieg
23
5.8


Castro
22
0.9
Yang
21
1.0


Ryan
16
0.6
Gillibrand
23
0.5


Gabbard
23
0.5
Hickenlooper
23
0.4


Inslee
22
0.4
Bennet
16
0.3


De Blasio
15
0.4
Williamson
19
0.2


Delaney
23
0.2
Swalwell
18
0.2


Total support

21.4
Total support

64.0


Average support

2.1
Average support

6.4

Candidate averages based on 23 qualifying polls sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee for determining debate qualification that have been conducted since the start of 2019. Total support does not add up to 100 percent due to undecided respondents, support for candidates who didn’t end up running for president and support for candidates who didn’t qualify.

Source: Polls

sarahf: What do we make of the argument that the first night is Elizabeth Warren’s to lose? Too much of a simplification?

nrakich: Well, as the table above shows, and as Geoffrey and I wrote earlier, Warren is the only top-tier candidate in Wednesday’s debate. That could work to her advantage.

But on the other hand, it’s dangerous to have high expectations like that!

Other candidates in that debate may be skilled debaters as well — in particular, I’m thinking Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker.

clare.malone: I think night one is likely to be friendlier. Warren is going to be targeted, I’d guess, in the same way that Sanders and Biden will be, but maybe won’t be quite as under fire.

geoffrey.skelley: Given the fact it’s the first debate, I lean toward the camp that thinks Warren might benefit from being the lone star on stage. As the polling leader, she’ll likely get the most time and questions, which I think will let her policy mojo shine.

And because it’s the first debate, it’ll still get eyeballs even though a lot of big hitters go Thursday.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Wow I just got warped into this chat!

And I just wanna start off by saying that I think the tone so far is verging on the side of underestimating the impact of the debates. It’s not that they’re that important, but that everything else isn’t that important.

sarahf: That’s fair, Nate. FiveThirtyEight contributor Julia Azari wrote a piece earlier this week on what we know about primary debates, and I thought it was interesting that she found that studies generally show that primary debates actually have a better chance of changing voters’ minds than general election debates. And that’s because voters can’t rely on their party identification as much when selecting which candidate to support.

natesilver: But in terms of the first night, I think the idea that it’s “Candidate X’s night to lose” is generally a dangerous position for that candidate to be in because it means expectations are set fairly high.

I also think Warren may be someone who does better with repeated, prolonged exposure. So she could be good in say a four-person debate, but I’m not as sure about a 10-person debate.

With that said, I think the media is still generally bullish on the “Warren emerges as Biden’s main rival” angle.

clare.malone: “Repeated prolonged exposure” sounds oddly gruesome, Nate.

nrakich: The New York Times had a whole article about Elizabeth Warren’s academic debate career.

That’s definitely expectations-raising.

geoffrey.skelley: I get the expectations danger — it’s a huge part of the primary process. But I wonder if it’ll be a wash because the only candidate who really has a target on his/her back is Biden.

sarahf: Why do you think that, Geoff?

geoffrey.skelley: Well, the media is going to look for storylines, of course, but Warren probably isn’t in much danger of having other candidates on stage attacking her. After all, she’s been more in the driver’s seat on policy issues.

nrakich: I think it depends on who is doing the attacking. Someone like Tim Ryan might attack Biden because he thinks Biden is in his “lane.” But Bernie Sanders might go after Warren, perceiving that he is losing support to her.

geoffrey.skelley: Right, but Warren won’t be on the stage with Sanders or Biden.

So in terms of optics, I think the fact she’s undoubtedly the one star on that stage might help her.

nrakich: I don’t think a candidate has to be on stage for candidates to attack them.

For example, I think a certain 45th president is going to be on the receiving end of more attacks than all of the Democratic candidates put together.

sarahf: Yeah, I’m with Rakich. And I think it might even be a good strategy for Warren to pit herself against the other Democratic front-runners, even if they aren’t on the stage.

natesilver: So if you’re, like, Klobuchar or Booker, what are your goals in the debate?

clare.malone: I think someone like Klobuchar needs to introduce herself on some level.

nrakich: 1. Have a viral moment or a killer line that will be replayed on cable news/can be leveraged for fundraising. 2. Chip away at the candidates who are ahead of you in your “lane.” That’s probably Biden for both of them.

clare.malone: Booker might be likely to use some of his anti-Biden momentum from the last week or so.

sarahf: Right, he’s already seen an uptick in cable news clips.

natesilver: But don’t Clare and Rakich’s arguments contradict one another?

nrakich: I wouldn’t say so, Nate. Often, the best introduction can be a defining moment.

clare.malone: Which part of Rakich’s thing?

natesilver: Like, re-introducing yourself and trying for a killer one-liner seem like different objectives.

geoffrey.skelley: The one danger in attacking is that you can’t know how it’s going to affect things, if it does at all. This is especially true in a super-crowded field. For instance, what if Booker comes off looking bad for going “too far” in attacking Biden, and somehow Klobuchar benefits because of how she handled herself?

natesilver: But by going on the attack don’t you cheapen yourself to some degree?

When you want to project seriousness and steadiness?

clare.malone: Killer lines don’t have to be flip.

That seems like YOUR projection

I think someone like Buttigieg could engineer that whole “I’m no fisherman, but I know bait when I see it” and could turn it into a moment where he shows how he’s above the fray.

That is, killer line (in the eye of the beholder) delivered seriously.

natesilver: But I mean if you’re Harris or Buttigieg, I think you wanna be above the fray, especially if Bernie and Biden go after one another.

I also think Harris and Buttigieg are in a considerably more secure position than, say, Klobuchar.

clare.malone: For sure, Klobuchar and Gillibrand I put in the same category of needing to have a big night.

sarahf: So, that’s something I want to probe a bit more. It seems as if we’re all operating under the assumption that these first debates could shake up the polling in the race, right? So I guess my question is when do we think this will happen?

And is there a possibility that things might not change that much until later in the cycle?

geoffrey.skelley: I would think the early debates have the potential to have a bigger effect than the later debates because people aren’t yet familiar with many of the candidates.

nrakich: I think things definitely have the potential to change within a week or two.

I think we’ll need a couple of days to see how the debate is playing out on cable news — what’s getting replayed, etc.

Then we’ll need a week — or a little less — for that to start reverberating in polls.

natesilver: I mostly disagree. I think the effects will tend to be strongest in the first 24-48 hours, which, yeah, could take a few days for us to detect.

But I think it happens pretty fast.

clare.malone: Everything Nate says in this chat sounds like he’s dealing with a deadly virus.

sarahf: But do you think we could be overestimating folks’ interest in the debates? What was it that AP-NORC poll found this week, that only 35 percent of Democrats are really paying attention to the race so far? I mean, clearly, that’s not us … but I guess I’m torn on whether these debates will really move the dial much. (Also reader, stay tuned — we’re going to be tracking some of these questions in real-time with a new poll from Morning Consult!)

natesilver: Well, if only 35 percent of Democrats are paying a lot of attention to the campaign, how many of them will actually vote in the primaries?

clare.malone: How many, Nate?

natesilver: There were about 30 million votes in 2016, which is a lot but not that many.

By comparison, there are somewhere on the order of roughly 160 million registered voters.

Of whom let’s say 70 million are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents in states with open primaries.

So 35 percent of 70 million is about 25 million, which is not far from 2016 primary turnout!

geoffrey.skelley: This is all just a complicated way of saying a lot people don’t really tune into politics until the general election.

If they do at all.

sarahf: I don’t know, 25 million was probably more than I was expecting.

nrakich: But remember that more people than usual are saying they are interested in the 2020 election.

Sixty-nine percent of voters said in an April/May NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that they were very interested in the 2020 election, which is almost as many as said that in October of 2012 or 2016!

natesilver: I’m just saying I think people are learning the wrong lesson from the “daily controversy of the week didn’t move the numbers” stories.

The debates tend to generate a LOT more polling movement than the daily controversies.

clare.malone: But does that movement last?

Or is it a proverbial “bump”? Like a bump from a convention or when you hop in the race?

natesilver: It’s often a bump.

But everything can be a bump.

clare.malone:

[bump]

nrakich: But the thing about a bump is that your horse-race numbers might fall back to earth, but people don’t un-remember you.

And boosting your name recognition is half the battle.

Look at Pete Buttigieg — his polling numbers have fallen down a bit, but he still has pretty high name recognition and favorability ratings.

natesilver: I’m most curious about the candidates who have good favorables but not that much first-place support, like Harris and Booker in particular.

sarahf: This story compared candidates’ net favorability (favorable rating minus unfavorable rating) in May to the first of the year, but I think there’s still a lot of room for these candidates to become better known and improve their favorability ratings. Even someone like Buttigieg, who has seen tremendous growth in name recognition since he entered the race, has the potential to be better known and better liked. After all, only about 60 percent of Democrats have an opinion of him.

nrakich: Well, I would be cautious about going too far there, Sarah — those last 40 percent are probably the hardest people to get the attention of.

And I’d guess the Democrats who will tune into the debates this week are probably disproportionately from the 60 percent of Democrats who have heard of him.

sarahf: That’s fair, but I think if he has a good debate performance, he could still get closer to, say, Harris’s or Warren’s lower bound.

And as to my meta-debate question: What impact do we think, if any, the moderators are going to have on shaping the debate?

natesilver: How they divide time between all 10 candidates and the 3-4 candidates in the middle of the stage each night will be important.

If I were a moderator then TBH I’d be like “fuck these candidates polling at zero percent” and focus on the ones with more plausible shots at the nomination.

I think that serves the audience better.

But that’s why I’d never be asked to be a moderator.

clare.malone: That’s why you’re not a moderator.

Jinx.

natesilver: Haha.

clare.malone: And in some ways, they’re playing within the strictures that the DNC has laid out.

nrakich: We’ve had this debate in previous Slack chats, Nate. I think, especially for these early debates, the moderator really has a responsibility to give equal time to everyone.

If they haven’t made their case after being given fair time in the first few debates, then I think it is fair for the media to start #winnowing.

geoffrey.skelley: I don’t know. I’m pretty skeptical of the notion John Delaney deserves equal time with, say, Warren. But he should get a shot to answer some questions, of course.

natesilver: Nah, fuck those people. They already get way too much media attention I think.

And it’s to the point where they’re sort of exploiting the media’s goodwill in certain ways.

nrakich: John Delaney was mentioned in 0.3 percent of cable news clips last week! Warren was mentioned in 15.5 percent.

natesilver: Which is 0.2 percent more than he should be in probably.

I feel differently about the ones who actually have credentials, like Inslee or Klobuchar or Booker.

clare.malone: That feels like a shot at Marianne Williamson.

natesilver: But if you’re just some random backbench U.S. rep. or mayor, you’d better earn your media attention.

geoffrey.skelley: I mean, the Democrats did set up rules that ended up keeping out a twice-elected U.S. governor and let in a spiritual adviser to Oprah.

But everyone knew the rules, so that’s also on Steve Bullock, too.

clare.malone: It’s definitely on Bullock!

I don’t begrudge Williamson for being popular amongst a certain set of voters.

sarahf: Yeah, I thought Williamson had some engaging, thoughtful answers in that New York Times video series where they interviewed all the candidates.

And she was way more dynamic than Yang.

Sorry, but I’m not sorry.

nrakich: She’s charismatic, I will give her that. (It’s hard not to be when you’re a motivational speaker by trade.)

natesilver: She’s not actually popular, though.

It doesn’t take much to hit one percent in three polls and get 65,000 people to donate to you in a country of 330 million people.

clare.malone: Well, to be fair, a lot of the candidates are not that popular.

sarahf: That’s true. But it does seem as if operatives in the Democratic Party would be upset with a Williamson nomination (as they would be with Sanders or Tulsi Gabbard).

Gabbard or Williamson draw a lot of opposition

Share of respondents who said they would not consider supporting a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary

Activists Oppose


candidate

april 2019

june




Gabbard
59%

–

69%

–



Williamson
—

–

66

–



Sanders
50

–

59

–



Moulton
—

–

59

–



Yang
35

–

55

–



Messam
—

–

55

–



De Blasio
—

–

52

–



Delaney
38

–

45

–



Ryan
—

–

45

–



Hickenlooper
29

–

41

–



Swalwell
—

–

41

–



Bullock
—

–

38

–



O’Rourke
29

–

34

–



Bennet
26

–

34

–



Biden
41

–

31

–



Klobuchar
29

–

28

–



Gillibrand
26

–

28

–



Buttigieg
26

–

21

–



Inslee
21

–

17

–



Warren
18

–

14

–



Castro
15

–

10

–



Booker
6

–

10

–



Harris
3

–

7

–

Respondents were asked about the 23 commonly mentioned candidates listed above, but they were also provided space to write in candidates not listed.

Source: SETH MASKET, “LEARNING FROM LOSS: THE DEMOCRATS, 2016-2020”

But OK, I don’t think we’ve actually talked about what we’re expecting in night two specifically.

… Is it clarity on Biden’s policy positions?

natesilver: No, I think it’s whether Biden and Bernie look old and stale up there and whether that means that something clicks in voters’ heads just from seeing a number of younger, credible alternatives to them.

nrakich: Yeah, I think the biggest difference-maker could be whether Biden shows his age.

The Joe Biden that most people remember is from the 2008 or 2012 campaign trail.

He hasn’t debated since that vice presidential debate against Paul Ryan seven years ago.

He’s 76 now. And we know that Americans are hesitant about electing a president who’s over 70.

sarahf: OK, fine, Biden is old. But so is Trump. And I think the moderators will at least push him a little on the issues as he hasn’t made his views on many policies known.

geoffrey.skelley: And the other candidates.

clare.malone: Definitely, the other candidates.

natesilver: Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh I’m not sure that isn’t at least halfway a media trope rather than a reality about Biden.

Other than Warren, a lot of the candidates have fairly vague policy positions.

nrakich: Agreed, Nate.

natesilver: And Biden has provided detail on some issues like climate and immigration.

nrakich: He’s also surprisingly liberal on issues like the minimum wage (he wants to raise it to $15 an hour). I think the media narrative around Biden’s policy positions is a little out of step with reality and shaped more by decades-old controversies.

clare.malone: What are you arguing?

That moderators won’t push him?

That’s slightly beside the point. I think other candidates will likely go after him.

Bernie, for instance, comes to mind.

nrakich: I just don’t see what Bernie has to gain from going after Biden? On the other hand, that assumes he is a rational strategic actor …

natesilver: Oh, see, I don’t see what Bernie has to lose from going after Biden.

I think Bernie has to be like “I’m the best overall contrast with Biden.” Right now, I think he’s done too much playing to his niche and not enough to the broader electorate.

It’s a tough balance to strike.

But Sanders has been on a downward trajectory in the polls, and I don’t think he’s someone who should be too risk-averse.

clare.malone: But … do you think he’s going to try to broaden?

geoffrey.skelley: Not especially.

clare.malone: That doesn’t seem too Sanders-y.

natesilver: I think he’s been getting bad advice by not trying to broaden more.

geoffrey.skelley: But Sanders’s strategy is predicated on winning with a plurality in a fragmented, crowded field.

natesilver: In which case I guess you have to take out Biden.

And sorta win ugly.

But, like, I think his strategy has been mistaken from the get-go.

Maybe it’s too late to change it now, though.

nrakich: I guess he does have lots of practice going after “establishment Democrats” from his 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton.

Maybe that is his comfort zone.

geoffrey.skelley: Right. I guess the approach Sanders takes at the debates might give us insight into whether he’s considering an alternate path to win the nomination.

natesilver: I think Sanders maybe doesn’t realize that running as the anti-establishment candidate might have been a good strategy to finish a respectable second place to Hillary Clinton given the unique circumstances of 2016, and that it’s probably a pretty bad strategy otherwise for winning presidential nominations.

clare.malone: I think he wants to run his way, though.

natesilver: Well, good for him but I think he’s quite unlikely to win the nomination that way.

clare.malone: Fair, Nate, but I think we have to consider what might be driving his logic. Which means I think we have to concede that Sanders sees himself as an ideological purist, or a totally alternate choice.

sarahf: OK, last question. Two back-to-back nights of debates complicates the viewing experience — the candidates are split, some lower-tier candidates maybe shouldn’t even be on the stage, and other candidates didn’t even make the cut. But, setting that aside, what are the big takeaways you’re looking for?

geoffrey.skelley: I feel like one of the lower-tier candidates is going to have a viral moment of sorts, so who is that? They’re actively trying to do this, by the way.

nrakich: Took the words right out of my mouth, Geoffrey.

natesilver: AnDrEw YaNg.

sarahf: mArIaNnE wILlIaMsOn.

Woo, fun lettering.

nrakich: What does the fun lettering thing mean? Are you being serious, but in a winking way? Or are you mocking the thing you are writing?

natesilver: It’s a troll font.

nrakich: Right, which kind of troll?

natesilver: With good trolling you’re never sure what type of trolling it is.

sarahf: To be clear, I’m just trolling Nate.

Politics Podcast: Are Lanes Emerging In The Democratic Primary?

By Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen and Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen












 












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The first Democratic primary debates are scheduled for later this week, but the candidates are already butting heads. Joe Biden’s comments about his past work with segregationists in the U.S. Senate earned him strong pushback from Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders appeared to be taking a jab at Elizabeth Warren when he tweeted an article about centrists coming around to her side. So, in this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew debates how much of the current conflicts in the primary are happening within “lanes,” and whether those lanes are evident in the polling. They also assess the stakes in President Trump’s approach to tensions with Iran.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Bulletpoint: Is Electability A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

This is Silver Bulletpoints — see the previous Bulletpoint here.

I’d describe myself as “anti-anti-electability.” Electability is a problematic concept in several respects, and it can serve as an invitation to promote white men over women and minorities even though it’s not really clear that white men have any sort of electoral advantage. Nonetheless, Democrats care a lot about who can beat President Trump. If, hypothetically, one candidate had a 70 percent chance of beating Trump and another one had a 40 percent chance, both voters and the media would be right to give that lots of consideration.

The problem is there’s no way to estimate electability that precisely. There’s some empirical basis for some claims about electability, such as that more moderate candidates are more electable, but even those are fuzzy.

And at times, concerns about electability can be self-fulfilling prophecies. A recent Avalanche Strategy poll found Joe Biden in the lead, but when voters were asked to “imagine that they have a magic wand and can make any of the candidates president,” Elizabeth Warren narrowly became the top choice:

Being a woman was the biggest barrier to electability, based on Avalanche’s analysis of the results, and women were more likely to cite gender as a factor than men. So there are a lot of women who might not vote for a woman because they’re worried that other voters won’t vote for her. But if everyone just voted for who they actually wanted to be president, the woman would win!

Obviously, I’m oversimplifying. Voters could avoid a woman in the primary because they’re worried about her chances in a general election. Still, it’s important to keep these feedback loops in mind. If voters start to see other voters supporting Warren (in polls and eventually in primaries), their concerns about her electability may lessen.

Check out the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections, including all the Democratic primary polls .

Bulletpoint: How To Tell When Biden Has Committed A Real Gaffe

It’s usually been smart to be skeptical when someone alleges that a new campaign trail incident or another daily controversy will cause voters to turn away from Joe Biden. While he has seen his numbers decline from his post-announcement peak, he retains the hallmarks of a traditional front-runner, and it remains the case that the media may be prone to underestimating Biden because his supporters are not the sorts that journalists routinely encounter in their social circles.

So I’d like to propose a two-pronged test to detect when an ostensible Biden misstep could matter:

The misstep ought to be viewed as such by the median voter in the Democratic primaries and not just by the most liberal or the wokest ones.
The misstep should be something that the media would call a misstep if it happened to another candidate, so it’s not just trading on Biden’s reputation for being gaffe-prone.

By these standards, Biden’s bragging about his working relationship with his segregationist (and racist) former colleague in the Senate, James Eastland of Mississippi, could be a problem for him. Although there hasn’t yet been polling on this, all sorts of Democrats are highly concerned about racial justice. That of course includes black Democrats, who are a big part of Biden’s base. And while this part is more subjective, my sense is that using Eastland as an example and Biden’s phrasing (“he never called me ‘boy’”) would be a story no matter which candidate made the remarks.

That doesn’t mean Biden will fall 5 points in the polls overnight or something, and some surrogates are already defending his remarks. But like the Hyde Amendment controversy, this is an example of the sort of mistake that could contribute to a gradual erosion in Biden’s support.

Check out the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections, including all the Democratic primary polls .

Bulletpoint: Only Two Meaningful Shifts Have Happened In The Democratic Primary So Far

Two quick announcements before this week’s edition of Silver Bulletpoints. First, we’re going to experiment with the format this week and try un-batching the Bulletpoints. So there’s only one Bulletpoint below, and we’ll publish the rest as they come in separate posts. The potential benefits of this: You’ll get them more in real time and individual Bulletpoints can be easier to pass around and share. But this might not work as well when the Bulletpoints are all on the same theme. Anyway! We’re a data journalism website and we’re collecting data, so let us know what you think of this change. Check out the previous Bulletpoints here.

Second announcement: As we teased on this week’s FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we’re partnering with Morning Consult to conduct polling before and after next week’s Democratic debates. I don’t want to spoil all the details, but Morning Consult will be interviewing the same voters both before and after the debates, which means that we’ll be able to track how support for the candidates changes in a highly precise way. We’re pretty excited, so we hope you’ll join us next week for all our debate-related coverage, which will include live blogs on both nights and podcasts afterward.

The debates aside, you generally shouldn’t be sweating day-to-day changes in the polls, at least not until we get much closer to the Iowa caucuses. There’s just way too much campaign left — and when candidates get a bounce in the polls, they usually revert to the mean within a few weeks anyway.

Measuring movement over the course of months is more meaningful, however. So let’s do something simple: compare where the Democratic candidates stand in an average of national polls now with where they were at the end of the previous quarter, on March 31.

Warren and Buttigieg have gained in the polls

Democratic candidates’ averages in the two weeks of polls leading up to June 19 vs. March 31

June 19


Pollster
Biden
Sanders
Warren
Harris
O’Rourke
Buttigieg
Booker




Monmouth
32
14
15
8
3
5
2


YouGov
26
13
14
7
4
9
2


Morning Consult
38
19
11
7
4
7
3


HarrisX
35
13
7
5
6
4
3


Suffolk
30
15
10
8
2
9
2


Fox News
32
13
9
8
4
8
3


Quinnipiac
30
19
15
7
3
8
1


Change Research
26
21
19
8
3
14
1


Ipsos
31
14
9
6
3
5
2


Average
31.1
15.7
12.1
7.1
3.6
7.7
2.1





March 31


Pollster
Biden
Sanders
Warren
Harris
O’Rourke
Buttigieg
Booker




HarrisX
29
18
5
6
6
3
4


Morning Consult
33
25
7
8
8
3
4


Quinnipiac
29
19
4
8
12
4
2


McLaughlin
28
17
5
8
8
3
3


Fox News
31
23
4
8
8
1
4


Emerson College
26
26
8
12
11
3
3


CNN/SSRS
28
19
7
11
12
1
3


Average
29.1
21.0
5.7
8.7
9.3
2.6
3.3

For the June average, polls were used if their final field date was sometime between June 5 and June 19. For the March average, polls were used if their final field date was sometime between March 17 and March 31. If a pollster conducted more than one poll during this period, only the most recent poll is included.

Source: polls

Two big, obvious things have happened. One is that Elizabeth Warren has gained at Bernie Sanders’s expense. Contrary to the claims made by the Sanders campaign, it’s not just “manufactured media narratives” that have Warren surging or Sanders slumping. Instead, that’s what you get if you make any effort to look at an average or cross-section of polls instead of cherry-picking, although the shifts have been fairly gradual.

The other trend is that Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg have swapped places. At the end of March, O’Rourke was at 9.3 percent and Buttigieg was at 2.6 percent; now, it’s Buttigieg at 7.7 percent and O’Rourke at 3.6 percent.

Related:

As much as you sometimes need to be careful of going overboard with the concept of “lanes” in the Democratic primary, these shifts seem consistent with the lanes that everyone expected. Sanders and Warren are competing for left-leaning voters. And Buttigieg’s rise has been a challenge for O’Rourke given some of their surface similarities as youngish white guy “outsiders” who are liberal but not too liberal.

Apart from those two important shifts, pretty much everyone else is in the same position in the polls that they were three months ago.

Check out the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections, including all the Democratic primary polls .

Politics Podcast: Who Are The Swing Voters In 2020?

By Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen and Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Micah Cohen












 












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As Democratic candidates prepare for their first primary debates, President Trump is gearing up for the general election by launching his reelection campaign in Orlando this week. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew debates who the persuadable voters are in the 2020 race. The gang also discusses the implications of the newly announced lineups for the Democratic primary debates and plays a round of “Good Use of Polling or Bad Use of Polling.”

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.