There’s a lot of noise out there. Discordant information bombards us from every angle. Following the presidential primary campaign of Democratic candidate Andrew Yang, we see two strikingly different pictures. If we look at polling and media coverage, we see a slowly growing outsider campaign, battling against the biases of the institutional gatekeepers, destined to finish well below the top. And yet if we look at fundraising numbers, individual donors, Google trends, social media and Youtube stats, and rally/event crowd sizes and enthusiasm, we come away with the picture of a new, rising force in American politics, snowballing its way toward serious contention. There is an undeniable grassroots movement growing around this man. It crackles with the electric energy of genuine excitement — the kind you can’t simply buy, inherit, or be gifted. Andrew Yang’s crowds are large and getting larger, his supporters are more invested, more passionate, and more locked-in than almost anyone else’s. We run into them on the streets, we find out that people we know are already supporters, we find them everywhere on the internet, and we see how receptive people are to his message when they hear it. Andrew Yang connects with people.

The 2020 circus

As Yang himself stresses with his New American Scorecard, the way we measure progress is crucial for success. For Andrew Yang to win, he must have a path to victory, and in order for us to draw that roadmap, we first have to determine where he stands. There are a few factors that make this difficult. The first one being that the 2020 Democratic primary field is far too crowded for this stage of the race. There are still, somehow, 17 candidates in the race, 18 if former mayor Michael Bloomberg officially decides to run. The good news is that the window for new entrants is shrinking fast, and within the next few weeks, we can be reasonably sure that at the very least, the field will not continue to grow. By November’s end, five state primary filing deadlines will have passed, and another nine by mid December, meaning candidates who fail to file in time will be ineligible to appear on the ballot. Jumping into the race at this stage already puts one at a severe disadvantage. As 2019 draws to a close, no new candidate will have a prayer.

In addition, there are a number of candidates, namely: Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock, Julian Castro, John Delaney, Joe Stestak, and Marianne Williamson, who are, to put it bluntly, the political walking dead. Come January, most of these campaigns, perhaps all of them, will have ended. It is possible that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris may drop out by then as well. While Andrew Yang has insisted that a large field benefits him come voting time, a field this large disadvantages Yang more than it helps him. It seems likely that the final field come Iowa will be somewhere in the 7–10 range, which is the sweet spot for Yang — enough candidates to split the vote so that Yang can be competitive without needing 30–60% of the votes, but small enough that all of the oxygen isn’t being sucked out of the room, and Yang isn’t getting lost in the crowd. And each candidate, even those polling at 0–1%, are still occupying space. Even a zero-percenter in the polls has some supporters, gets some media coverage, gets some donations, attends some events, and so forth. When they drop out, their supporters, donors, coverage, and event slots will be absorbed by the remaining candidates, and Andrew Yang, like a human VAT, will get a slice.

The problem with polling

The second problem are polls themselves. We’ve known since 2016 that polling is not as accurate as it used to be. Critics point to the fact that many polls are conducted primarily on landlines, which an increasing number of Americans no longer use, rendering poll results less and less representative of public opinion. Many pollsters also exclude those they do not deem “likely voters” from their results, which under-represents the support of any candidate activating the politically disengaged, or young, first-time voters (sound familiar?). More significant than this, the past 15 years has seen the rise of texting, during which most Americans have grown more accustomed to shooting someone a quick text rather than making a phone call. Combine this with the rise of pervasive robo-spam calls, and every American with two brain cells to rub together has been conditioned not to answer their phones when they see an unfamiliar number. “If it’s important, they’ll leave a message or just send a text” is what everything thinks.

As anyone who has worked in telephone-based sales can attest, years ago when calling large numbers of people, especially cold calls, folks used to pick up their phones. Nowadays, you get one person in fifty on the line, and the minority of those people who don’t immediately hang up almost always have, well, a few screws loose. There’s no kind way to put it, the only people who still answer random calls and talk to strangers have lost their damn minds. Every process, including polling, that depends on reaching large numbers of strangers by phone, and having them constitute a rough proxy for the general public, has become a lot harder, a lot less effective, and a lot less accurate. Political polls are functioning as a placebo at this point: they matter only because people believe they do, not because they are representing an accurate picture of reality.

Andrew Yang needs to grow in the polling to continue qualifying for debates, and because many people still believe the polls matter, which itself makes them matter. But the polls will always under-represent Yang’s support. The problem is, we don’t know exactly by how much. If the Iowa caucus were held today, Andrew Yang would outperform the 3% he is averaging in the polls. You can bet on that. But I wouldn’t bet on him getting the 15% he needs to in order to make a huge splash, much less the 20–25% he would need to win it. There is still much work to be done.

The media is never going to help Andrew Yang

A constant source of frustration to the Yang campaign and his supporters has been the disproportionately low coverage — including periodic instances of complete omission, and sparse debate speaking time — that Andrew Yang has been given by the media. Print/digital media has been much fairer, as has local and independent media, but the mainstream TV news outlets have ignored, brushed off, and disrespected Andrew Yang at almost every turn, and there is little indication that this will substantially change any time soon. Over the months, the attitude around the campaign and its supporters has been “if we can only achieve X, then they will finally have to take us seriously!” But whatever that “X” is: hitting polling marks, climbing the rankings, making every single debate, raising $10,000,000 in a quarter, nailing debates, town halls, and speaking events, or leaving a succession of established politicians in his vapor trail as he outperforms and outlasts them, hasn’t made a huge difference. The media’s disdain for Andrew Yang has not softened. The media, it turns out, doesn’t have to do anything. They see themselves as self-deputized kingmakers whose role it is to choose a few “acceptable” leaders (as determined by their own strikingly homogeneous interests and sensibilities) and present them for the plebs to decide from among. It’s time to abandon the delusion that the media is this fair maiden Yang must prove himself to, and that once he accomplishes the necessary feats of valor, he will win their affection. The truth is, they’re just not that into him.

The only thing that will make the media respect Andrew Yang is winning, and we will have to win without their help. The good news is that the mainstream media, while still very influential, has less control over information than they have ever had before. Social media, podcasts, YouTube, and independent media has democratized information and created a generational divide over how we consume news, with people under 50 getting their news online, and people over 50 getting it mostly from television. Andrew Yang will continue to get interviews and TV spots on the networks, and his campaign will do everything in their power to get more, but we must come to terms with the reality that in the 23 hours and 50 minutes a day that Yang is not actually being interviewed on camera, he’ll rarely be mentioned. We must — and can — win in spite of this.

Andrew Yang’s Path to Victory

Yang’s path to victory begins by finishing the forth quarter of 2019 strong. He needs to spend a lot, but also save a lot, which means he needs to raise a lot. The Tom Steyer campaign has been a very instructive case study on what one can achieve with ad-buys. Steyer is polling 1–3% nationally, and 4–6% in early primary states. And this is all without having any ground game, any online game, a compelling personal story, personality, grassroots enthusiasm, or much in the way of a policy platform. You couldn’t design a better study to isolate what ads — and ads alone — can do. What Andrew Yang lacks in media coverage, he can and must make up for with advertising. Andrew Yang will need to become a fundraising dynamo. He should do more contests, including Freedom Dividend giveaways, maintain some constant fundraising goal progress bar with rewards if hit, more merchandise flash sales, keep rolling out new merch, and, yes, start selling official versions of those pink hats. It’s time to pull out all the stops. Yang’s fundraising strategy needs to mirror his climate plan: leave nothing off the table. Yang needs to come right out and tell it straight to his supporters on all his online platforms: the gatekeepers have raised the drawbridge, help me buy ladders and grappling hooks and we’re gonna scale these mf’n walls and take this castle. The Q4 fundraising goal informally going around the Yang Gang is $30 million, and that’s spot on (three times the previous quarter’s haul). That kind of money lets Yang blast the landscape with ads, grow his campaign operations, and also sock money away for later on, when he’ll need it even more.

If Andrew Yang takes his rapidly growing ground game, his peerless online game, his compelling message, vision, and platform, and his Yang Gang army, and combines that with a Steyer-like ad-blitz, hitting double digit polling in January is 100% achievable. On a smaller January debate stage, Yang must finally take the gloves off, and begin decimating his opponents with data, reason, and, of course, Humanity. This isn’t just a matter of drawing contrasts with his competitors, or gaming the broken debate structure to gain more speaking time, it’s about showing the American people that he can take people down if he needs to. This direct, aggressive engagement with other candidates, combined with the smaller roster, will finally give him the opportunity to truly spread his wings on a national stage.

All the while, Yang must continue to maintain an increasingly hectic schedule of appearances, interviews, and speaking engagements almost anywhere that will have him, provided they have a sufficiently sized audience reach, or in the case of live events, that the people in attendance are sufficiently influential. If Andrew Yang is going raise his name recognition to where it needs to be, and reach necessary numbers of hitherto disengaged voters (one of his strongest secret weapons), he will need to be the hardest working candidate by a mile. Fundraising in Q1 of 2020 will also be critical, because this is when Yang needs to get nuts with his ad spending, and should start staging massive stadium rallies that show just how much support he has on the ground.

Iowa

The polling target to strive for is 15% in Iowa by the time of the caucus. That would guarantee a top three finish for Yang, and depending on how much he over-performs the inaccurate polls, he could even finish first. If Yang is still polling single digits in Iowa by February, it’s not a back-breaker — he could still finish in third, and pick up some delegates, but this makes the path to victory narrower and more difficult. He needs to be polling at least double digits in Iowa to put himself in a position to win. If Yang walks away from Iowa in the top three, and with delegates, this accelerates the Yangmentum snowball effect into overdrive. It will boost fundraising, and it will cause his media mentions to go up, even if he’s still being covered far less than people below him (and expect that to be the case). More profound than that, it will rend a fissure into the mindset of scarcity that’s jading a sizable percentage of the Democratic electorate from throwing their support behind Yang. Yang is intelligent, creative, visionary, knowledgeable, insightful, sincere, and human. People like Andrew Yang, but the biggest roadblock to his success is the self-fulfilling prophecy that he “can’t win.” This is, of course, a completely irrational, self-defeating, and undemocratic mindset to have — if one will only vote for the person who seems destined to win, why even hold elections, why not just award the nomination to the “front-runner” from the outset? But, as we know, scarcity does things to the mind, and Yang will have to overcome this by showing that he can win.

Early states and Super Tuesday

Once he demonstrates that he can compete at the highest levels in Iowa, the floodgates will finally burst, and Yang can leap from early state to early state, picking up steam each time. Yang is poised to do very well in New Hampshire, the second state, and Nevada, the third state, is primed for Yang, with a sizable Asian community, close proximity to California (where he also does well), and with a local economy more at risk to automation than most. If Yang is right up there with the top dogs when Super Tuesday rolls around in early March (when 16 different states/territories vote on the same day), he will be in a position to shock the country and take the election by storm. If Andrew Yang emerges from Super Tuesday in fourth place overall or lower, he does not have a viable path to victory. If he emerges in third place overall, his path to victory shrinks to a knife’s edge. If he emerges competing neck-and-neck with one other candidate for first, or even in second place but within close striking distance, his victory is very much attainable as he grows and grows. If he emerges from Super Tuesday in the lead, the primary is his.

Yang will need to win the primary by more than a hair’s breadth, because if there is any wiggle room for the party establishment to use internal rules and procedure to sway the results in the event of a tie or near-tie, you can bet your life they’ll choose an establishment candidate over Yang. He needs to win by enough of a margin that this cannot happen. This is all fully achievable, and we can help make it happen.

How you can make this happen

Vote for Andrew Yang! Register to vote. Now. This moment. If you are already registered, check your status to make double sure. If you aren’t registered Democrat, change your registration — showing that Andrew Yang can grow the Democratic party is vital. Find out when your state’s primary is held. And VOTE!

Donate, donate, donate. Money is the fuel that campaigns run on, and money is the single biggest factor that will allow Andrew Yang to overcome the media blackout and institutional biases against him. If you haven’t donated, please do so (or buy official merchandise). If you already have, please chip in more. If you can afford to max out, you are the kind of superheroes that Yang cannot win without.

“Yang” your personal social networks. Every Yang supporter should make sure that they’ve convinced at least 1–2 people they personally know to support Andrew Yang. Talking politics can be uncomfortable, but it’s worth it. One pitch from a relative or friend goes further than all the ads or debates in the world.

Volunteer and show up in person. You can directly volunteer for the Yang campaign by phone-banking, text-banking, canvassing, and more. Click here to sign up with the campaign, and check the official Yang subreddit for other grassroots and networking opportunities with the Yang Gang. Please also attend campaign events and rallies in your area! You can find them here. These contributions may not measured in dollars, but they are absolutely invaluable.

Rep the Yang Gang. This one is simple. Become a walking billboard and representative for Andrew Yang. Change your social media avatars or usernames to something Yang-related. Get a bumper sticker on your car, get a MATH hat, or another piece of wearable merch, and frequently wear it in public. Get a yard sign, or placard to put in your window. And if you cannot afford any of these, make your own. Equally important is to be as polite, civil, positive, understanding, and patient as possible when representing Yang in public, online or off. Humanity First is more than just a slogan, it must be a way of life.

Signal boost Andrew Yang. Follow Andrew Yang across all of the social platforms, and share, like, retweet, and upvote his content. Do likewise for other Yang supporters, and those who give Yang positive mentions.

Follow Scott Santens. Santens is a UBI expert, writer, and activist, personal friend to Andrew Yang, and the single most effective resource and conduit through which all of the grassroots ideas and activity of the Yang Gang flows. Follow him on Twitter here. If you don’t have a twitter, make one just to follow Santens and Yang. If you already follow him, make sure you’re checking in on what he’s posting as it may get lost in your feed.

Now get on it, Yang Gang! If you found this article interesting or useful, please consider sharing it!