One resoundingly clear number in our polling reveals why Eric Swalwell is dropping out of the 2020 race

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One resoundingly clear number in our polling reveals why Eric Swalwell is dropping out of the 2020 race

Eric Swalwell

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  • Rep. Eric Swalwell has dropped out of the race for president.
  • After months of polling nearly 10,000 U.S. adults, only 152 respondents said they'd be satisfied with Swalwell as nominee of about 3,500 respondents who said they would likely participate in their state's primary or caucus.
  • His support was low, and his backers tended to like a lot of different candidates.
  • His backers liked fellow Californian Sen. Kamala Harris considerably more than your typical Democrat.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, the California Democrat who made gun legislation the centerpiece of his pitch for the Democratic presidential nomination, has exited the race to focus on his House seat. Swalwell's exit caps off a brief campaign where his numbers never seriously materialized and were actually even lower than they seemed.

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. For the eight surveys Swalwell was included, he failed to materialize as a serious contender.

Read More: How the INSIDER 2020 Democratic primary tracker works

Sometimes polls can obscure the reality of the people involved. We post all of our poll data publicly on the individual respondent basis. Nevertheless, over the 8 polls in which 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.

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Eric Swalwell July 2

Even worse, 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. That can go a ways to obscure the dismal reality for candidates like Swalwell: Of the 3,510 people 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?

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FILE PHOTO: Twenty 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who will participate in the party's first debate in Miami later this month in a combination file photos (L-R top row): U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennet, and Elizabeth Warren. (L-R middle row): Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, Former Gov. John Hickenlooper, and Gov. Jay Inslee. (L-R bottom row): Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, U.S. Representatives Tim Ryan, Tulsi Gabbard, Eric Swalwell, Author Marianne Williamson, Former Representatives John Delaney and Beto O'Rourke. REUTERS/Files/File Photo

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.

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., arrives to speak at the 25th Essence Festival in New Orleans, Saturday, July 6, 2019. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

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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.

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