ABC Democratic Debate: Live Coverage

It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking for a “game change” moment at these debates. Saturday night’s debate, though, likely didn’t produce one. There were no amazing one-line put downs. None of the candidates made an egregious statement likely to offend a big group of voters. No one made some misstatement of fact that was so bad as to expose them as not knowing what they were talking about. You can see that in our debate grades, where the FiveThirtyEight staff grades the candidates on how much each improved (or hurt) their chances of winning the nomination.

CANDIDATE	AVERAGE GRADE	HIGH GRADE	LOW GRADE
Hillary Clinton	B+	A	B
Bernie Sanders	B	A-	C
Martin O’Malley	C	B+	D

The FiveThirtyEight team, on average, gave Hillary Clinton a B+, slightly ahead of both Bernie Sanders’ B and Martin O’Malley’s C. That’s not a tremendous debate “win” for Clinton, but she doesn’t need to win these debates by a wide margin. She continues to lead the race in Iowa — though that lead is not entirely safe — and she continues to hold a massive advantage with the Democratic establishment and non-white voters. Clinton’s just looking to run out the clock; the status quo is good for her, and the third Democratic debate is unlikely to change the status quo. Anyway, if you’re reading this the day-after, and you didn’t watch the debate, start at the bottom to see what happened chronologically. Otherwise, here were a few highlights:

• Clinton didn’t really go after Sanders for the data breach controversy;
• Donald Trump was the only Republican name-checked by the Democratic candidates;
• We considered O’Malley’s suitability as a vice-presidential pick;
• Nate asked whether the Democrats’ weekend debate schedule is worse for Clinton;
• O’Malley joined a long list of governors who claim undue credit for balancing their state’s budget.

I’m not a pollster or a statistician. But I do understand some of the hidden math of American life. We each have identities-as-stated. Then there’s how we express them in polls and public conversations — and what we say to ourselves. For example, many women who are religious conservatives have a different opinion of, and attachment to, issues of reproductive health than men in similar religions. To me, this is shaping up to be a secret(ive) election, meaning I suspect the Democrats will benefit from some people who cross lines because they disagree with the GOP candidates who are going far-right on immigration and reproductive issues; but also some (smaller) measure of socially conservative Dem-leaning folks may reject candidate positions on issues like policing and gun regulation.

I think the fact that the Democrats aren’t tearing each other apart is good news for Democrats. I think the longer the Republican race goes on with Donald Trump leading, the further right the Republicans will be on the issues, and that is bad for the eventual GOP nominee. I still think the Republicans are slightly favored in the general because I don’t think Trump will be the nominee. Why do I think that? Obama’s approval rating is still only about 45 percent, and Republicans are leading on the generic ballot.