How many candidates are there for the US presidential election of 2020?
The elections is not until November 2020 – 18 months away.
For the Republicans, Donald Trump has been running since he was elected to the White House in November 2016 with regular campaign rallies, the likes of which we have never seen before from an incumbent president.
For the Democrats, there is a massive field which keeps getting larger. The official tally is now 18 with the latest to declare being Eric Swalwell. You can check out the full list with very short pen portraits here.
However, in opinion polls the leading Democrat is someone who has not even declared yet: former Vice-President Joe Biden who has been facing accusations of inappropriate behaviour with a number of women.
As I blogged here, in such a crowded field, so far the Democrat candidates with the highest poll ratings are largely those with the strongest name recognition with little differentiation on policy or performance at this very early stage.
So currently the leading contenders are the four Bs: [Joe] Biden, Bernie [Sanders], Beto [O’Rourke] and [Pete] Buttigieg. But it is still very early days …