Jophiel wrote:
Trump has spent a chunk of money already hiring staffer sin early states and putting together a campaign. He's probably spent more than others on equivalent campaigns since he literally put it together by just dropping a lot of cash around, a luxury Biden doesn't have. Trump has also been in the campaign for a month or so now whereas Biden has yet to announce.
You saw the effects of late entry and small campaign operations last cycle where you had GOP candidates taking a good portion of the popular vote in states where they hadn't filed for a full slate of delegates due to time and expense. Heck, you saw it in 2008 when Clinton (who had expected to clear the field by Super Tuesday) hit states where her campaign hadn't gotten a full slate of delegates on the ballot because they hadn't expected it to be competitive at that point. That's not something you can just buy at the last minute, even discounting filing deadlines.
Trump has not spent much of anything relative to his earnings. Of course he spent money on a staff, but doesn't need to spend money for attention.
The Democratic field is weak. If Warren and Gore were running, then you would have a point. When your best choice is B-San, the field is wide open. No one sees him as a serious candidate, so the likelihood of every DEM who want to run for president, but not go against Hillary, coming out of the woodwork would dramatically increase.
The take away, same with the Fox News forcing candidates to appeal to the whole country, is that the first states do not determine the presidency. As long as we allow them to, they will.