As election day looms, it is worth looking at the collection of allies and supporters assembled for both campaigns. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have managed to largely unify their parties’ lawmakers and traditional allies around their campaigns. 

The Biden campaign’s endorsements reflect the balancing of the two major wings of the Democratic Party and the expansive coalition-building Biden has emphasized. Biden has received endorsements from those firmly in the centrist, moderate wing, such as the conservative Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. 

At the same time, Biden has garnered support from progressive stalwarts including the progressive firebrand Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mi) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). 

Progressive outside groups have also rallied to support Biden’s campaign. Though many supported other candidates during the Democratic primaries, progressive organizations such as 350 Action have endorsed Biden, while others have rallied to his side even as they hold off on official endorsements. 

Biden has also received many endorsements from former Cabinet officials he served with during the Obama Administration, organized Labor groups and even disaffected Republicans.

Most prominently the Democratic National Convention featured a host of disaffected Republicans endorsing Biden. This list included former Ohio Governor and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich and has been joined since by Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain (R-Az.).

This year, as Trump has sought to cast himself as the law and order candidate, he has received the backing of major police unions, including the largest police union in the United States. The Fraternal Order of Police representing over 300,000 police officers endorsed Trump, citing his support for law enforcement during the protests that erupted in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

Despite some high profile abstentions, the Trump campaign has also received major support from Republican lawmakers and their traditional allies. In contrast to 2016, where the release of the Access Hollywood tape set off an October scramble for Republican lawmakers with many Republican lawmakers withdrawing their endorsements or tempering their support, Republican lawmakers are largely unified behind Trump. 

Prominent exceptions to this rule include Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) who has publicly said he did not vote for Trump. Romney, who voted for Trump’s removal from office during his impeachment trial earlier this year, has emerged as one of the President’s most stalwart critics on the Right. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has also refused to say whether she will vote for Trump. 

Beyond individual lawmakers, some high-profile former Republican strategists and political operatives have also garnered attention. The Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump have both assailed Trump and aimed at promoting Biden’s candidacy.

Newspapers have also often been touted as coveted endorsements, despite limited evidence of their persuasiveness. In 2016, Hillary Clinton far outpaced Trump in newspaper endorsements. 

In this category, Biden retains a commanding lead. Over a hundred newspapers across the country have endorsed his candidacy. The Manchester Union Leader made headlines recently when it endorsed Biden, the first time it has endorsed a Democrat in over a hundred years. 

Meanwhile, Trump has the support of just six daily or weekly newspapers. 

Each campaign is entering a time-crunch during the last few days before the election. Early voting is already underway with more than 60 million Americans having voted. Election Day is Nov. 3. 

Fresh off the heels of disastrous and contested Iowa caucuses, the eight candidates still in the race to become the Democratic Nominee for President of the United States wage on. 

Senator Bernie Sanders

Sanders now appears to be the front-runner after a narrow victory over former Mayor Pete Buttigeig, winning 25.7 percent  and 24.4 percent of the votes respectively. Both candidates walked away from the Granite State with nine delegates. 

Sanders also won big in Nevada with almost 50 percent of the votes, though not all precincts have reported in yet. His win should not come as a shock to most, as he has historically done well with Latinos, first time voters, and younger voters. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Silver State is 29 percent Hispanic or Latino, compared to just 6.2 percent in Iowa and 3.9 percent in New Hampshire. 

Sanders’ win in Nevada brings his delegate count up to a commanding 31 and assures his place as the candidate to beat. 

Former Mayor Pete Buttigeig

Buttigeig has done better than many predicted he would thus far in the race. He essentially tied with Sanders in Iowa but walked away with one more delegate. In New Hampshire he was just 1.3 percentage points behind the new frontrunner. 

Buttigeig faces challenges on his road to the nomination, though. He continues to see little support among minority voters, especially among black voters. He also faces criticism from his opponents for his willingness to receive campaign contributions from billionaires. 

Buttigeig placed third overall in Nevada, just behind former Vice President Joe Biden with 15.3 percent of the vote. With it came two new delegates, bringing his count up to 24.  

Former Vice President Joe Biden

Biden, the man long considered to be the one to beat, may have fallen off his pedestal. He called his fifth place performance in Iowa a “gut punch.” Additionally, during the New Hampshire debate, Biden said, “I’ll probably take a hit here.” 

Biden did better in Nevada with a second place finish. This earned him four new delegates, bringing his total to 10 and surpassing Warren and Klobuchar in the total delegate count. 

His camp still holds out hope for a win in South Carolina, where he is expected to do well with African-American voters.

Senator Elizabeth Warren

Warren currently stands in fourth place overall with eight delegates, but she’s hoping for a turn-around after a powerful debate performance in Las Vegas Feb. 19. 

“So I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians,’” she said. “And, no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.” 

Offensive seemed to be her go-to for the night, taking digs at Biden and Klobuchar for their ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel, Buttigeig for his relationship with billionaries and Sanders, positioning herself as a fighter ready to take on big money and get things done. 

Her campaign seems revived, but her fourth place finish in Nevada may be a signal that she still has a long way to go if she wants to be the one to face Trump in the fall. 

Senator Amy Klobuchar

The Senator for Minnesota was the real star of the New Hampshire primary, shocking everyone with her third place finish. Klobuchar won 19.8 percent of the vote and raised her delegate count to seven. That puts her in fifth place overall. 

Klobuchar’s positive performance is partially due to her success in the Democratic debate held just four days before the primary. Her central focus seemed to be attacking Buttigeg, calling him “a political newcomer” and building the case that she – more than Buttigeig or Biden – is the right choice for moderate Democrats. 

However, her debate performance in Las Vegas left more to be desired, and she again spent most of her time aruging with Buttigeig. She placed sixth in Nevada, gaining 4.2 percent of the vote and no delegates. Styers narrowly edged her out of the top five. 

Voters should wait and see if her strong finish in New Hampshire was a stand alone moment or the sign of big things to come. 

Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg

Since entering the race late November, Bloomberg has spent $452 million of his own money on advertisements, more than any candidate has ever spent in their entire campaign, and he’s not even running in the first four states. This has drawn sharp criticism, with his opponents saying it’s an attempt to buy the election. 

Bloomberg saw a rise in polling numbers after his late entry but faces heavy backlash from the other candidates. They have cited his role in the discriminatory practice of stop and frisk while mayor of New York City – a policy he defended publicly until October 2019. 

Bloomberg was also called out for his history with sexual harassment and discrimination. Nearly forty women have sued either him or his company. Many of these women are silenced by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), something his fellow candidates have pressured him to void. 

In a press release Feb. 21, Bloomberg said that he was part of three NDAs, and that he would release any woman from them if they contacted his company. This comes after stating multiple times on the campaign trail that he would not release women from NDAs. 

During the debate, Bloomberg appeared ill-prepared for the onslaught of attacks he received, but voters will have to wait until Super Tuesday – March 3 – to see how criticisms will affect the multi-billionaire. He is not on the ballot for Nevada or South Carolina, but voters in the latter can write him in. 

Bloomberg has yet to receive any delegates, as he was not running in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. 

Who’s still running? 

Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii, and Tom Steyer, a billionaire and philanthropist, are also still running for the Democratic nomination. Both have yet to receive any delegates, and they did not qualify for the debate in Las Vegas. 

In Nevada, Steyer pulled ahead of Klobuchar, making it the first state in which he’s broken the top five. He spent $986,471 on Facebook ads alone in Nevada in the last three months. After polling at least 12 percent in two polls in South Carolina, he’s qualified for the next debate. 

Gabbard received zero percent of the vote in Nevada, less than Yang, Delaney, Bennet, and Patrick, who have all formally exited the race. 

Who dropped out? 

The Democratic field lost a polarizing figure in February, with Andrew Yang announcing the end of his run the night of the New Hampshire Primary. The businessman who ran on the idea of reorganizing the economy and universal basic income said the decision was rooted in the numbers. 

“I am the math guy, and it is clear tonight from the numbers that we are not going to win this race,” he told supporters.

Yang marks the 20th Democratic candidate to drop out. The once ultra-crowded Democratic field has narrowed, but there’s still a long way to go before the Democratic National Convention July 13. 

Other candidates to drop out of the race recently are Deval Patrick  Feb. 12, Michael Bennent Feb. 11, and John Delany Jan. 31.

A tumultuous and chaotic debacle at the Iowa Democratic Caucuses Feb. 3 has provoked much angst and grumbling within the Democratic Party, sown confusion into the presidential nomination race and placed the continuing preeminence of the Iowa Caucus under fire. 

Reforms enacted after the chaotic clash at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago established the modern presidential nominating contests. Since 1972, Iowa has held the marquee event of the nominating contests for the Democratic and Republican Parties. 

The state has long drawn criticism, particularly crescendoing this year over its representativeness. Iowa is more than 85 percent white in a steadily diversifying nation and many members in the Democratic Party have called for a change in its placement. The debacle places Iowa’s delicate position as the first nominating contest, which has been under steadily mounting scrutiny, even more in doubt. 

Defenders of the Iowa Caucus have noted two key advantages. One, that Iowa is a relatively small state where voters put a premium on retail politics so candidates that are less well-known nationally or have fewer resources have a shot to vault into the national spotlight by winning the Iowa Caucus. Famously, President Carter went from an obscure figure to eventually securing the Democratic nomination gaining prominence by winning the Iowa Caucus in 1976. 

The second value of Iowa is that Iowa voters notably take the process seriously. Operatives who have worked presidential races in Iowa note that it is not unusual for the same voters to go to events for several candidates as they try to make up their minds, and by all indications Iowa maintained this reputation for diligence this year. 

However the story of dysfunction in the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) has been the leading story following the caucuses instead of any story about the putative winners. The Democratic presidential hopefuls were placed in an awkward position when the state party struggled to collect and release results.

To recap, the complicated Iowa Caucuses work much differently than the direct voting primaries where throughout a day voters simply go to a voting place and cast a private ballot for a candidate of their choice. 

At the Iowa Caucus voters had to show up to specific caucus sites at a specific time. When they gather there, speeches are made by supporters of each candidate, and then there is the first vote. In the first vote, voters gather in clusters by the candidate they support. Then the caucus officials count how many people are in a grouping for each candidate.  Candidates need support from 15 percent of the total caucus goers at a site to be viable. If a candidate reaches viability, the supporters cannot realign, but for everyone whose candidate did not reach viability on the first vote, they either can realign on a second vote or choose to leave. 

This year, in a reform for greater transparency pressed for by supporters of Sen. Sanders after his narrow loss to Hillary Clinton in the Iowa Caucuses in 2016, the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) will release three sets of numbers: a candidate’s voters on the first round, a candidate’s voters on the final round of voting, and the candidate’s state delegate equivalent (SDE), which will be used to determine how many delegates to the national convention that candidate will garner. The IDP has encouraged all media to take the SDE result as the winner of the Iowa Caucus.  

According to reports out of Iowa, there is no singular reason for the disorder in Iowa but rather a combination of failures by the state party. The state had invested in a new app made by the company Shadow to allow precinct chairs to report results. However it appears the party never trained its volunteers in how to use the app, and even for those who could log on, the app did not function as it was intended to. 

When the precinct chairs resorted to previous methods and attempted to call in results, many found phone lines to be completely jammed and had difficulty reaching party headquarters. It was not until late Tuesday that the IDP released even partial results.  

The process has resulted in much grumbling from the presidential candidates themselves and alighted swift criticism of the state party from many Democrats.  Along with the organizational failures, many have criticized the state party for its initial statement explaining that they were not releasing the results for “quality control” and for generally being uncommunicative during the crisis. Indeed, members of various presidential candidate campaigns have complained about being hung up on when they tried to get information out of party headquarters the night of the caucuses. 

Though the vote total is still apparently showing inconsistencies, and the AP, along with other media organizations, are refusing to call it, the IDP has announced that former South Bend mayor, Pete Buttigieg, won 14 delegates, closely followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won 12, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who won eight, and former Vice President Joe Biden, who won six. Sen. Sanders also is leading in both the first vote totals and the realignment vote totals. 

Notably, former Vice President Joe Biden underperformed expectations set by his own campaign. Biden campaign officials had confidently predicted that the former vice president would be viable in more areas than he ended up in reality. 

The race continues with the nation’s first primary in New Hampshire Feb. 11, closely followed by the Nevada Caucus Feb. 22 and the South Carolina primary, rounding out the first round of nominating contests Feb. 29. Following South Carolina is Super Tuesday, when over a dozen states will hold their nominating contests. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who chose not to contest the first four nominating contests, has been investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the Super Tuesday states. 

On Sept. 12, the remaining 10 major Democratic candidates met for the third Democratic debate. The debate took place in Houston at Texas Southern University and was broadcast on ABC and Univision. The moderators were Linsey Davis, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Jorge Ramos.

To qualify for this debate, Election Central stated that candidates had to have achieved 2 percent of support in at least four of the 21 Democratic National Committee (DNC) polls and needed at least 130,000 individual contributions, with 400 unique donors per state from 20 different states. Because of these requirements, the candidate pool shrunk significantly, meaning only one night of debates was needed for the remaining 10 candidates.

The order the candidates stood on stage from left to right was as follows: Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Kamala Harris, businessman, Andrew Yang, Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro. Biden and Warren were situated in the middle, as they were at the top of the polls. This was also the first debate where they were both on the same stage.

As of Sept. 20, these are the rest of the Democratic candidates that are still running for president according to CBS New York: Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, Maryland Rep. John Delaney, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Mayor of Miramar, Florida Wayne Messam, Former Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, Former hedge fund manager and activist Tom Steyer, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, and author and activist Marianne Williamson.

At the beginning of the debate, all candidates were given time for an uninterrupted opening statement, and most of them called out Trump’s divisive comments and actions.

Arguably the most memorable opening speech was Yang’s, as he did something he called “unprecedented.” Yang had the candidates and moderators laughing in shock as he announced that his campaign would give $1,000 a month to 10 American families who signed up on his website for a whole year. He called them freedom dividends.

Another funny moment was when Booker, who is bald, commented on the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau’s, “menacing” head of hair.

On a more serious note, Booker would later discuss his plans for criminal justice reform, citing the fact that although drug use is equal amongst most races, African Americans are four times more likely to be incarcerated for it.

Roughly 40 minutes of the debate was spent on healthcare, which Biden and Sanders debated thoroughly. Still standing by Obamacare, Biden said, “My plan for health care costs a lot of money. It costs $740 billion. It doesn’t cost $30 trillion, $3.4 trillion a year, it turns out, is twice what the entire federal budget is.” The $30 trillion number in reference to the cost of Sanders’ Medicare for All plan.

In response, Sanders said, “That’s right, Joe. But status quo over 10 years will be $50 trillion. Every study done shows that Medicare for All is the most cost-effective approach to providing health care to every man, woman, and child in this country. I, who wrote the damn bill, if I may say so…”

In a testy exchange between Castro and Biden, Castro claimed that his healthcare plan would automatically enroll every person in the country and that Biden’s would not. Biden responded that nobody would have to buy in. They then went back and forth about whether Biden’s plan was an opt-in plan or not before Castro said, “You said they would have to buy in. Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago?”

“There’s something fundamentally wrong when one of the richest and most powerful countries can’t make sure a person can afford to see a doctor,” Warren added.

Another hot topic was gun control. O’Rourke, whose hometown of El Paso was the location of the Walmart mass shooting that left 22 dead in July of this year, was asked about his stance on getting rid of assault rifles. Applause followed his fiery answer as he said, “Hell yes we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against your fellow Americans anymore.” He later tweeted this response again, asking those who agree to retweet him.

Harris applauded O’Rourke for remaining strong after the shooting in his community. She also quoted herself by using the same phrase she used immediately following the El Paso shooting: “Obviously [Trump] didn’t pull the trigger, but he’s certainly been tweeting out the ammunition.”

Klobuchar touched on the need to close the loophole that allows domestic abusers to have access to guns. In addition, she said, “We have to send a message to Mitch McConnell, we can’t wait until one of us gets in the White House,” when confronting the fact that the Senate has not acted on gun control, while specifically denouncing the Majority Leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Buttigieg made history with his answer during the final question, which was about the adversity each candidate had faced in their life. He became the first presidential candidate to ever talk about his coming out moment and recalled wondering if it would be the end of his career. He said he, “…realized that you only get to live one life and [he] was not interested in not knowing what it was like to be in love any longer.”

One last notable moment was shortly after Biden was asked a question, protesters from the audience started chanting. It was not clear what they were chanting when heard on the TV, but according to multiple Twitter sources, it was “We are DACA recipients. Our lives are at risk.”

CNN reported that the first poll since the third debate shows Biden leading at 31 percent, Warren at 25 percent, Sanders at 14 percent, Buttigieg at 7 percent, Harris at 5 percent, Yang at 4 percent, Klobuchar and Booker at 2 percent and the rest at 1 percent or less.

According to NBC News, Donald Trump responded to the debate before the House Republicans at a Baltimore retreat by saying he was surprised that Pocahontas, referring to Warren because of her controversial claims of having Native American ancestry, was still in the competition. He also said, “…now it looks like [Warren] could beat Sleepy Joe, he’s falling asleep. He has no idea what the hell he’s doing or saying,” when referring to Biden.

The next debate is scheduled at Otterbein University in Ohio Oct. 15.