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    Can You Tell How Electable A Candidate Is?

    Joe Biden is staking his campaign on the idea he's most likely to win. But many candidates thought to be unelectable in the past — from Reagan to Trump — have won elections.
    Sep 05, 2019 5 minutes
    George H.W. Bush peeks at a poster of Ronald Reagan, then one of his opponents for the Republican party presidential nomination in 1980. (AP file photo)

    Democrats are debating which candidate will be the most electable on the ballot next to President Donald Trump with the election just 14 months away.

    Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden is staking his campaign on the argument he would be the most likely to win, but many candidates who have been thought to be unelectable in the past — from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama — have won elections.

    “You could find lots of examples of candidates who were kind of pilloried as being, quote, unelectable who ended up becoming president,” says Kyle Kondik, a political analyst with the website Sabato’s Crystal Ball, part of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “Obviously, Donald Trump is a great example of that.”

    The act of determining “who

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