If you go onto Kalshi or Polymarket, watch CNN on your TV or the Bulwark on YouTube or just chat with your politico friends, you’ll see that Jon Ossoff has emerged as the favorite for the 2028 Democratic nomination for president.
He’s currently at 26% on Kalshi and Polymarket, with AOC at 15% and Newsom at 11%. But I don’t think that’s how it plays out.
Half of Americans can’t even give an opinion on Jon Ossoff. Americans know AOC and Newsom much better. Name ID is a massive predictor in who wins presidential nominations in the era we live in.
Look at Joe Biden. Look at Donald Trump. Look at Hillary in 2016 too. Everybody knew who they were long before they ever ran and that mattered more than anything. The presidency and presidential elections have evolved over the last 20 years, the result of the evolution of our media ecosystem from a simple TV and print structure to what we live in now: chaotic silos, distributed across all of our phones.
There are exceptions. Kamala Harris is known by 96% of Americans (who is the 4% that doesn’t?) and is leading national polls for 2028. There’s more variables for Kamala, for example she just ran, lost and Democrats are desperate to win. So name ID is necessary but it’s not enough.
The other exception people will throw at me is Obama. In December 2006 almost half the country couldn’t rate him either, about where Ossoff is right now and he won. Fair. But the people who did know Obama liked him like 4 to 1. Ossoff’s not close to that, he’s barely above water with the people who know him. And again, it was a very different media environment.
Nate Silver called Ossoff his “far-away No. 1 choice” at Crooked Con on Saturday, he said Ossoff “seems like the uniformly ‘compromise candidate’ between the progressive and the more centrist factions of the party.” Maybe he has a point there but how will that play out in the wild? I gave Ossoff a home in both lanes in the model and he didn’t move much. AOC still wins 28% of runs vs. 21% for Ossoff.
Half of my model is my personal ratings and I rate Ossoff 9th. As I wrote earlier, he leads in the market. On my ratings alone, he wins 13% of runs. Blended together and he’s third.
I still think the market and conventional wisdom is sleeping on Newsom. 72% of people know who he is. His brand is out there, he’s run one of the biggest states for 8 years and he stood up to Trump in a big way last year, when Democrats didn’t know how to fight back yet.
I also think it’s strange that Kalshi gives Ossoff a 66% chance to run. It’s weird to have a frontrunner who may not even run.
So I’m putting it on the record. On Nov. 9 I made a call on the site that AOC’s market price passes Ossoff’s on any day before June 30, 2027. If it doesn’t happen you’ll see it graded wrong on the track record page. I can’t go back and change it either, the product locks it.
The next wave of YouGov data will show whether Ossoff has boosted his name ID.
