Why Bill de Blasio’s Campaign Failed (Hint: Nobody Liked Him)

There is officially only one mayor1 left in the 2020 presidential race — and it is the one who runs a city of 100,000 rather than the chief executive of the biggest city in the United States. On Friday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination — leaving us now with 18 major candidates remaining, per FiveThirtyEight’s definition.

However, the list of candidates with realistic shots at winning the nomination may be even shorter than that; just 10 candidates met the polling and donor thresholds to participate in last week’s Democratic debate in Houston. And de Blasio was not among them, nor did it seem possible for him to qualify for the next debate, in Ohio in October. As of July, only 6,700 people had donated to his campaign (debaters need 130,000), and he has only hit 2 percent support in a handful of polls all year long (none of which are counted by the Democratic National Committee for debate qualification). In short, it’s no mystery why de Blasio called it quits.