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| US election 2020: The race to take on Trump enters crucial phase | |
| (3 months later) | |
| Election season is getting under way and the race to become the Democratic challenger to Donald Trump is hotting up. | |
| Last summer, there were nearly 30 serious candidates vying for the attention of the party's supporters, but fewer than a dozen are still standing. | |
| Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are the relatively well-known frontrunners, but some of the chasing pack were mostly unknown outside the Washington DC bubble before running. | |
| The group features the usual mix of seasoned politicians, but it also includes a couple of billionaires, two military veterans and a tech entrepreneur. | |
| Here's our rundown of the candidates left in the race, with a take from the BBC's Anthony Zurcher on each. | |
| Who are they? What are their key issues? What's their secret weapon against President Trump? We've got it all covered. | |
| Tap here if you can't see the candidate search tool | Tap here if you can't see the candidate search tool |
| The race so far | |
| Although the field has now been whittled down to less than a dozen contenders, at one point it had swelled to nearly 30 Democrats. | |
| Former congressman John Delaney began his campaign back in the summer of 2017 and was joined a couple of months later by Andrew Yang. After two and a half years of campaigning, Delaney admitted defeat and withdrew in January. Yang, who got 1% of the vote in Iowa, soldiers on. | |
| Others, like Michael Bloomberg and Deval Patrick, left it late to get involved. Bloomberg's strategy is to focus his attention on states that will vote on Super Tuesday (3 March), spending huge amounts of his personal wealth on TV ad campaigns to pick up support. Patrick's strategy is unclear. | |
| Polls point to clear top tier | |
| Joe Biden has been the accepted frontrunner of this race since the first national polls began to emerge and his numbers have remained steady throughout. | |
| Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have pushed him hard at times - with Warren leading in the RealClearPolitics national average briefly in October last year. | |
| Pete Buttigieg was the big poll surprise in 2019, gaining traction while other more high-profile candidates like Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker struggled. | |
| You can only gauge so much from national polling though, especially in a race based on state-by-state contests. | |
| There's a lot of drama to come | |
| There is one contest every week in February, but the race begins to get really busy next month. On 3 March, there are votes in more than a dozen states - including California and Texas, two states with a huge number of delegates on offer. | |
| Although there is usually a clear winner much sooner, the race officially ends in July at the Democratic National Convention where the candidates with the highest number of delegates becomes the party's presidential nominee. | |
| Words: Anthony Zurcher, Mike Hills. Charts: Mike Hills. Development: Felix Stephenson, Alexander Ivanov, Steven Connor. Design: Debie Loizou. |