# What kind of information would serve as the best evidence for resolving the debate of whether a centrist or leftist Democratic nominee is likelier to take the White House in 2020?

The public debate for who should be the Democratic Party presidential candidate for the 2020 electoral race hinges on whether the Dems are likelier to win by nominating a progressive or socialist, or by nominating a centrist or moderate. Assuming this is a problem one wanted to approach epistemically (as opposed to just viewing the debate as a power struggle), we should look for facts of the matter about whether, overall, Americans are likelier to elect a progressive/socialist, or moderate/centrist to the Presidency in 2020. Unfortunately there is no apparent consensus about how to make traction on this problem.

*   Having read a variety of sources for months now, left-leaning media outlets give all the usual arguments for why the Dems must nominate Sanders or another progressive to win, and all the more moderate media outlets say the exact opposite. Ideally, some people from both sides would come together for an adversarial collaboration, but it doesn't appear either side can even agree on what would count as good or bad evidence for their positions. In other words, most of the time on both sides of this issue are playing [reference class tennis](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Outside_view), and neither side is aware this is what they're doing.
*   On social media I started a discussion on this topic among some rationalists and effective altruists to see if it would elicit hope to make traction on this issue. None of them who had a strong opinion on this issue could or would back it up at length, which I'm assuming means they don't have strong, [asymmetrical evidence](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/) (at least not in the eyes of the opposition) for their position. It's my expectation two rationalists _should_ be aware when they're playing a game of reference class tennis. If on this topic they are aware, it doesn't appear rationalists know how to get out of this failure mode better than anyone else.
*   My search of last resort, at least [under the streetlight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect) (_read:_ my attempt to answer this question without doing any work myself), was to check [PredictIt](https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination). As of this posting, the top 6 contenders have been assigned between a 9% chance and 23% chance of winning the Democratic nomination. In roughly the same rank order for chances of winning the Presidency overall, those same 6 prospective Democratic nominees are currently receiving an assignment of between a 6% and 19% chance of winning. These 6 contenders run the gamut from Beto O'Rourke and Joe Biden,  
    commonly regarded as the most moderate/centrist prospective Dem nominees, to Bernie Sanders, whose policy platform is generally furthest to the left among the lot of them. Leading the pack is Kamala Harris who has announced her presidential run and is perceived as somewhere between centrist Dems and democratic socialists like Sanders, with Sanders and Biden tied for 2nd (both are yet to publicly declare if they'll be running in 2020). PredictIt's predictions for which candidate will fare best are strongly correlated with who is regarded as being the strongest contender as a personality. They appear to have little to no correlation with the candidate's perceived ideology. The high level of apparent uncertainty in the predictions is likely an artifact of it being so early in the presidential race, as opposed to the prediction markets pricing in how likely the candidates' policy platforms are to appeal to the median voter.

**In other words**, if there is solid info out there which could best predict whether, in general, a leftist or centrist Democrat is likelier to win the Democratic nomination and/or the Presidency in 2020, _it doesn't look like this has been priced into PredictIt's predictions yet_. So to answer this question, we might have to find info prediction markets haven't yet, or that they may have at least overlooked.

_Suggestions for how to answer this question:_

*   I'm not looking for the kind of evidence the public, for whatever value of "the public," would necessarily agree would resolve this debate. I'm looking to answer this question for my own curiosity. I.e., if you think people are generally too [mind-killed](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Mind-killer) on this subject to notice good evidence even when it's staring them in the face, don't worry about that. Please optimize for sending me what you consider the best empirical info on this subject my way without consideration for how anyone else might take it.
*   Uncovering the relevant info could be easier than it appears. Maybe the data I'm looking for isn't a needle in the haystack. For all I know there is some excellent poll that perfectly answers this question, but nobody in the media cited it because the results didn't make for a sexy clickbait headline.