Rep. Eric Swalwell, the California Democrat who made gun legislation the centerpiece of his pitch for the Democratic presidential nomination, has exited the presidential race to focus on his House seat. Swalwell’s exit caps off a brief campaign where his numbers never seriously materialized.
He did make the Democratic debate, but in reality his support base was difficult to quantify after even weeks of polling. INSIDER has been conducting a recurring series of surveys asking respondents who they would be satisfied with in the event they secured the Democratic nomination. Over the eight surveys Swalwell was included, he failed to register as a serious contender.
Read More: How the INSIDER 2020 Democratic primary tracker works
Sometimes polls can obscure the realities of surveying, where individual respondents weigh in. We post all of our poll data publicly on the individual respondent basis. Nevertheless, over the eight polls where Eric Swalwell was a possible selection, we had 9,145 respondents. Of those 9,145 respondents, 3,510 indicated they both were registered to vote and also that they intended to participate in their state’s Democratic primary or caucus.
Only 16% of those plausible primary voters had heard of him, and only a quarter of those aware respondents would be satisfied with him as the Democratic nominee for president. The dismal reality for Swalwell: Of the 3,510 plausible Democratic primary voters we spoke to, a paltry 152 of them would be satisfied with Swalwell as nominee.
That’s rough, but is as good or better than the figures posted over the same period by Marianne Williamson, Rep. Seth Moulton, Rep. Tim Ryan, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former Rep. John Delaney and Gov. Steve Bullock. Prior to his own congressional seat being contested by a primary challenger, Swalwell like those other long shots had no reason to promptly exit the race.
There are certainly benefits to playing on the national stage aside from the presidency: were a House member considering a bid for Senate or a Governor’s mansion, a considerable email list and tens of thousands of donors can be a considerable aid. But knowing when to fold is a necessary part of that calculation, and Swalwell seems to have come to terms with his dismal presidential polling numbers and realized that perhaps this simply wasn’t his cycle.
So, who stands to gain from Swalwell’s exit?
Respondents satisfied with Swalwell tend to like all the candidates.
Part of the advantage of INSIDER’s polling strategy is that not only can we see the percentage of a candidate’s supporters who are also satisfied with a second candidate, but we can also see whether that’s better or worse than we’d expect given the overall state of the race.
To take a candidate with a little better name recognition, it’s not just that 76% of Amy Klobuchar supporters also like Kamala Harris, it’s that 76% is 25 points higher than the typical Democrat, leading us to conclude that Klobuchar supporters are disproportionately Harris fans. On the other hand, the 47% of Klobuchar fans that like Sen. Bernie Sanders as well is 5 points lower than Sanders’ overall performance, leading us to believe her support comes from places where Sanders underperforms.
In Swalwell’s case, his supporters really, really liked all the frontrunners and still had strong support for almost every other Democrat. One explanation for this is the kind of respondent who liked Swalwell was simply very open-minded and would have been satisfied with any number of final nominee. There were 11 candidates that outperformed their overall performance among Swalwell’s backers by more than 10 percentage points, and six candidates who outperformed by 20 points or more.
Swalwell’s fans like home state Sen. Kamala Harris
If there is someone perfectly suited to capitalize on the Swalwell exit it’s Kamala Harris, the Californian’s own senator. Harris has enjoyed a recent polling upswing after a tour-de-force performance in the debates, and has been soaking up support ever since.
Fully 83% of those satisfied with Swalwell as nominee were also satisfied with Harris as nominee, which is a breathtaking 32 percentage points higher than Harris’ overall performance among the Democrats.
That being said, Swalwell’s fans were marked by their openness to other candidacies to begin with, and it’s a struggle to imagine his exit seriously altering the dynamics of the race.
Swalwell’s backers weren’t fans of Sanders or Andrew Yang
If there is something we can have confidence in, it’s that Swalwell’s supporters are less likely to move into the Yang or Sanders camps. The New York businessman and the Vermont independent were the only pair of candidates underwater when it came to the preferences of those satisfied with a Swalwell nomination.
READ MORE:
- Eric Swalwell is running for president in 2020. Here’s everything we know about the candidate and how he stacks up against the competition.
- California congressman Eric Swalwell just dropped out of the 2020 presidential race to run for re-election in the House
- Eric Swalwell tweets about Trump more than any other 2020 candidate, but it may not be an effective strategy
