{"id":176,"date":"2019-03-07T20:18:13","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T20:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/?p=176"},"modified":"2019-03-07T21:16:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T21:16:59","slug":"why-is-everyone-running-for-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/2019\/03\/07\/why-is-everyone-running-for-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is Everyone Running For President?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hat tip for Brian Roberts for getting me interested in this data.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s remarkable how much of a phase shift seems to have happened with the 2016 cycle. Suddenly many more people were \u2018running\u2019 for President.\u00a0The Ballotpedia graph below indicates that the jump occurred both among people claiming to be affiliated with one of the major parties and among independents.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Graph is at: https:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/List_of_registered_2020_presidential_candidates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But if the early numbers are any indication, we haven\u2019t seen ANYTHING yet.\u00a0 As of March 2 2015 there were merely 178 candidates with papers filed according to data on Ballotpedia (https:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Presidential_candidates,_2016<\/a>) while we are already at about 580 as of March 2nd<\/sup> 2019.\u00a0 If this pace continues, we might break the 5000 candidate mark!<\/p>\n

The 2016 filings do continue the basic pattern from earlier in the series that more filings come from the opposite major party.\u00a0 196 Democratic and Democrat-Farmer-Labor filings versus only 75 Republican filings (excluding the duplicate entry for Arnold Matthew Jones). \u00a0Thus, the same processes seem to be in play as in the past, only on a much larger candidate-number scale.<\/p>\n

The 2020 list seems to have a few obviously prank names like those Roberts highlighted in an Election Law List-Serv post for 2016 (Boddie, President R19 and Internet, Beef are both running for instance). None the less the prank names are obviously merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of completely non-serious or otherwise frivolous filings. How many of these \u2018candidates\u2019 are really people who are running?\u00a0 Has doing a vanity filing so that one can say \u201cI ran for President\u201d become much more of a cultural \u2018thing\u2019 for some reason? Or perhaps the most likely explanation is that the internet has made it easier for people (and\u00a0Beef Internet<\/a>) to navigate the required process in order to file to run with the FEC, and to have social media fun doing so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hat tip for Brian Roberts for getting me interested in this data. It\u2019s remarkable how much of a phase shift seems to have happened with the 2016 cycle. Suddenly many more people were \u2018running\u2019 for President.\u00a0The Ballotpedia graph below indicates… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}