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Dont go to India! The negotiations take ages, the sales cycles are longer, and the prices are adjustable. That is not a market you should target. Amit Mizrahi received all these warnings early last year when ICV, the Israeli HR tech startup he works for, decided to foray into the Indian market.

The red flags were raised by the companys angel investors and other Israeli corporate executives in his network. ICV ignored the naysayers and spent the next six months customising its product.

How? Mizrahi, who heads business development at ICV, explains: An average CV in Israel is a page long. It goes up to three pages in the US. In India, we saw some CVs that are 50 pages long! On average, they go up to 12 pages. Most systems cannot handle such vast amounts of data. So we developed machine learning tools that understand various educational degrees, designations and institutions prevalent in India, among other factors, to find out what makes for a suitable candidate for a company and how we can enable quick and cost-efficient hiring for them.

ICV is currently doing pilot projects with 20 Indian companies to fulfil their staffing needs. Its India story has prompted one of the investing firms, Prytek, to aggregate 43 Israeli tech companies from its portfolio and offer them as a suite to Indian companies.

This has also made ICVs critics eat their words.

Enter the Wadi Israel has, over the last decade, emerged as a hub for deep-tech startups. Thousands of these ventures have mushroomed around Tel Aviv and nearby cities, earning the area the moniker of Silicon Wadi (wadi means valley in Hebrew). However, Silicon Wadi had a small domestic market to cater to Israel has a population of less than 10 million.

So the Wadi companies looked westward and created products and services for the lucrative US market. Many managed to raise a lot of funds and ensured profitable exits for investors. Soon, Silicon Wadi became the B2B tech support for Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Google and Facebook.

Now, things are changing in the Wadi. Companies like ICV are creating products thinking about India first, says Anat Bernstein-Reich, who runs A&G Partners, an advisory firm that helps Israeli companies find more business in India.

Since 2002, her firm has helped 100 such companies set up shop in India and majority of the deals have happened in the last three years, 18 of them this year alone. Israelis are finally looking at India as not just a backpacking destination after their compulsory military training, but as a country that means business, says Bernstein-Reich.

Of course, growing bilateral ties between the two countries and advisory companies have a lot to do with this new Israel to India wave. Most of all, it is India Incs growing interest in the Silicon Wadi that is causing this shift. Ten years ago, Israeli companies like Ness Tech and Click-Software were acquiring Indian companies.

Now the trend has been reversed by the likes of Wipro, Flipkart and Sun Pharma that have acquired Israeli tech companies in the last three-four years, says Bernstein-Reich. Indian companies are also aping the Silicon Valleys strategy with respect to Silicon Wadi by attending startup events, setting up R&D stations, and assigning a staffer to stay in Israel for longer periods to scout for companies to acquire or collaborate with.

Collaboration with Israeli tech gives India a competitive advantage in the global market, says Ankur Pahwa, partner-ecommerce & consumer internet, EY India. Israel spends close to 4% of its GDP on R&D which makes it one of theleading countries in global innovation.

The Beeline

Thanks to this push (from the likes of A&G) and pull (from Indian companies), Israeli tech firms have been able to crack the B2B Indian market in six major sectors: telecom & internet, agriculture, cybersecurity, education, healthcare and automobiles.

Today, an Israeli mobile marketing analytics and attribution firm called AppsFlyer occupies 75% of the market share in India, adding top consumer internet companies such as Paytm, Hotstar, Nykaa and Swiggy toits list of 250 Indian clients. Ariel Assaraf, CEO of a log analytics company Coralogix, tells ET Magazine that the Israeli company now ranks India alongside the US as its top market.

His company managed to unseat two Silicon Valley unicorns to bag deals at one of Indias leading streaming platforms and an online ticketing company that are now among Coralogixs 10 major clients in India. It is no mean feat considering most Israeli tech companies see the US as their biggest market and India as only the latest one too small to make a significant contribution at the moment.

Only one or two leading Israeli companies manage to make $10-15 million in annual recurring revenue from their India operations, say the stakeholders. But the numbers are getting better with each passing day, according to Mark Granot, vice president of software testing firm Applause.

Have a new app you want to test for user interface and user experience across different operating systems before the big rollout? Want to check how user-friendly is your streaming players interface across all shapes, sizes and brands of screens? Granots firm offers a select set of users from a community of over 400,000 people. It has been doing that for a few years for Google, Facebook, Netflix, Walmart, Starbucks and Nike.

Two years ago, Applause decided to venture into the Asia-Pacific region and chose India first. Currently, we are working with 10 Indian companies in addition to Indian branches of American companies. India contributes a high single-digit percentage to our overall revenue, says Granot.

Meanwhile, in the world of Indias overthe-top content players, Israeli tech companies such as Kaltura, Screenz, Applicaster and Cloudinary, are common names now. ZEE5 is working with at least 12 Israeli companies while VOOT with half a dozen. MindCET, an incubator for edu-tech startups, has helped at least 20 Israeli companies find opportunities with Indian firms and institutions in the last couple of years, says founder Avi Warshavsky.

In April, Bernstein-Reichs A&G Partners signed a deal with EM3 Agri Services in Noida to launch an accelerator called Agribator to connect Israeli agri-tech companies with Indian agro firms and farmers. In just a few months, Agribator brought in six Israeli companies into India, says Rohtash Mal, chairman of EM3. More deals are being signed as we speak, he says.

There are at least a dozen other big Israeli establishments in the agri-tech space that have set shop in India in the recent past, says Randhir Chauhan, managing director of the India arm of Netafim, an Israeli agri major present in the country since 1997.

From nowhere to nearly everywhere, the Silicon Wadi is gradually forming another Mini Israel in India. Only there is nothing on the ground everything is in the cloud, as software as a service or SaaS. It is also evident that these synergies are not being forged on the back of solid tech alone, but on the basis of similarities in culture and values.

As Gily Netzer, chief marketing officer of Cymulate, a cyber tech firm that entered India last year, notes, People dont buy a product, they buy into the people. Our ambitious yet straightforward nature appeals to the Indian business community.

We are always pushing ourselves to find solutions to problems but we are also not afraid to say no. Cymulate simulates cyber breach and attacks for security testing. In other words, it inflicts multiple artificial attacks on the clients system to find out how badly it needs to be secured and then shows just how it can do that.

Last week, the company signed a deal with one of Indias largest banks whose name Netzer says she is contractually bound not to disclose. Meanwhile, NSO Group, an Israeli tech company, hit the headline in India after its spyware was allegedly used to snoop on WhatsApp accounts of dozens of Indian users.

NSO later denied the allegations. Israelis are constantly under threat. They have a tendency to keep innovating because if they dont evolve, they fear they wont exist, says Saket Agarwal, managing partner of Onnivation, a Mumbai-based firm that invests in the India business of Isreali tech firms and runs their sales and growth operations.

Started in 2016, Onnivation made $1 million in revenue in its first year. Last year, it made nine times that figure. Agarwal contemplates a co-investing model for working with Israeli startups now and hopes to make $14 million by May next year. So far, Onnivation has helped 15 Israeli companies find business opportunities in 100 Indian companies.

Among them is ZEE5 that evaluated tech partners from several markets before picking the Israelis. We are attempting to do a lot in a short period of time to deliver value to our audience. For us, the pace at which the Israeli partners work is encouraging.

You need the kind of discipline that comes from them. Perhaps their compulsory military background also ensures they are regimented towards timelines, says Rajneel Kumar, head of product at the streaming service.

For Akash Banerji, business head at streaming platform VOOT, it is Silicon Wadi over everyone else because unlike the American, Chinese, or even Indian techies, the Israelis design products and services for a foreign market first. So you wont find many direct to customer products there, but several successful SaaS companies.

Given their wealth of experience and exposure, they are more sensitive and agile to foreign markets, and also have cost-effective solutions. Another reason Indian companies end up working with multiple Israeli tech firms, he notes, is that the Wadi is one organic creature with different strands, all rooted in one place.

You meet one player, they recommend several others that could be useful for your business. The Silicon Valley in the US, on the other hand, is far bigger, but also full of individual creatures, he adds.

See more here:
The Wadi connection: Technology startups from Israels Silicon Wadi have found a fertile ground in India - Economic Times

December is the last month in the tumultuous 2010s, a decade that saw the rise of new political heroes and villains, a changing of the guard in different sectors of society, the growing concern for climate change taking a more desperate turn, and an unending cacophony of opinionated people screaming into theFacebook void. In "The Last 10 Years," a series of pieces scattered over these last 30 days, we look back at what happened to try to figure out what comes next.

At the risk of exposing my true age to all and sundry, I am going to share with you the story of the marvelous, Golden Age of print. I am going to discuss how it was creating that supposedly archaic medium of information, lifestyle news, and entertainment: The glossy magazine.

Magazines were like the media version of slow cookingit took a while, but the end product tasted so good. Writers were given a two-month lead time (three or four, if you were a bimonthly), photo shoots were done from scratch, and no one would touch stock photos with a ten-foot pole. You didnt pluck something from Facebook or Instagram and called it a trend; youcreatedthe trends. The salaries and contributors fees were mostly paltry; but it seemed, at least to non-media people, that everyone looked great and was having a fantastic time.

I am the former editor of an erstwhile shelter and home magazine, but I did have a life before all this as an interior designer and it was something that I had always pondered going back to. After all, it started in a design office for me.

I got my first writing assignment while I was employed as a junior designer at a big firm. Summit Media had just boughtGood Housekeepingfrom Hearst, and then-managing editor Apol Lejano called me on my office landline (yes, landline).

Kapatid, marunong kang magsulat, di ba? she asked over the crackling phone. I vaguely remember answering Medyo.Whatever I said, she told me to go to the Sogo offices the next week to shoot a house for their second issue. When I got there, I was handed a Ziplock bag that contained four cartridges of 120mm film to give to the photographer and a home address, and I never looked back.

This was the pre-digital-photography/early Internet era, and it was quite a bit of a process to produce a single article. For every shoot, then-editorial assistant Mabel David would hand out the magical Ziplock bag with film (if I was lucky, they would throw in a precious pack of Polaroids, which costed P800 a pack).

Every shoot was like this: I went with the photographer to the shoot and interviewed the lovely subject. And then there was the waiting game of having the film developed at Benjie Todas for a couple of days, and the transparencies were chosen by the art director with a loupe (Ano po angLoupe? Google it, son). Id print out and fax my article toGood Housekeeping(yes, fax) at my uncles laundry shop, which was the only store in my small town that had a fax machine. Mabel would encode it, and Apol would edit it. Fact-checking was done through a pager (yes, a pager) and Id have to call them back on the landline to respond. By then, a couple of weeks had flown by.

After a three-year hiatus, I took on a copy/features editor position at the bimonthly design magazine Bluprint at Mega (now One Mega group). Back then, the premise of creating a magazine on the editorial part was very simple and innocent: just make a magazine that people would buy and read. It was often left to the publishers to slug it out in terms of sales and marketing, with the editors-in-chief doing whatever they wanted, with a little bit of reprimanding from the top.

Writers I encounter today below the age of 25 are often mystified by the subject of Page Plans. Before magazine offices had a decent Mac that could do this on desktop, each title was given a giant board with either cardboard pockets to slip the pages in, or a magnetic board with printouts of the magazines thumbnails. It was definitely an art on its own.

Here, the editor-in-chief (the EIC) and art director (AD) would plot how the current issues pages would run, from Inside Front Cover (IFC) to Outside Back Cover (OBC). And you also had to make sure that the final page count could be divisible by eight or four (a printing requirement). Each title had its own formula of Page Plan arrangements, and you needed a build-up of interesting stories before you got to the Well (the main stories in the middle). If your Pre-well articles were boring, the reader wont even have the patience to get to the Well and she would never buy your magazine again.

Advertising executives also had access to the Page Plan to plot their ad placements. A few days before printing, they would all huddle around the boards in their heels, bickering over whose client would get the prime ad spots at the beginning of the magazine. And mercy on the unwitting person who would mess up the Page Plan while at itthey would definitely take a good beating from editorial and the art department the next day.

It was in 2005 that I was appointed EIC ofReal Livingmagazine; the position came at a good time, as this was the beginning of a robust era in print media. By 2009, the publishing company I was working at had around 25 glossies to its name, and it wasnt uncommon for a fashion magazine to go beyond 200 pages with about half of that number dedicated to ads, which was a feat for a local title.

Also, covers mattered. These days, nothing would date an editor faster than by saying the phrase: Whos your cover girl? But decades ago, it was the most important part of the magazine. Unlike now, where every articles views contribute to a whole for your websites performance that month, a magazine cover could make or break your issue. If you had the right, perfect, and timeliest cover, people would buy your magazine, regardless of whatever was in it. Just dont fudge the coverlines.

It was an exciting time, and the sheer variety of stories and adventures that went with it was incomparable. The editors themselves would say that working at a magazine wasnt glamorous at all, but the truth is that even if it did entail a lot of hard work, itwasglamorous, by todays standards, at least. Out-of-town shoots were the monthly norm, especially for the big issues; style editors and EICs would go on week-long foreign junkets; PR firms would jockey for position to push products to the bigger titles; and there were even some shoots with catering (not ours, though). I think it was also because we all had the luxury of timeand for the clients, an excess of money. But then, we knew this wouldnt last.

Of course, the irony of writing all this for a website isnt lost on me. A colleague whose magazine was shuttered at the same time as the one I was working on likened the whole situation to the advent of automobiles when people were riding on horses. It was like these new vehicles were all driving by you, yet you didnt trust your gut and still ordered your carriage wheels and saddles.

This is exactly what happened. Digital had snuck in, with a totally different team set up to handle it. Instead of getting aggressively involved and forcing myself upon this team, I was in denialeven when at each report, all the numbers had gone down. With each budget cut, I became excessively paranoid, and with good reason.

A colleague whose magazine was shuttered at the same time as the one I was working on likened the whole situation to the advent of automobiles when people were riding on horses

The final nail on the coffin came a week before the print title I was handling was terminated. Like a harbinger of doom, someone posted her entireReal Livingcollection up in a selling group on Facebook. There was the photo of my entire editorial life, in stacks of magazines and books from 2003 to 2017, with the post caption: Reason for selling decluttering. I had published articles on decluttering, and now, the title had become someones clutter! The only bright moment there was a long thread of strangers who actually wanted to buy the whole collection.

Right after the closure of many print titles in 2018, most of the EICs, myself included, were at a loss. We all had devoted our time and lives to being editors, and once that era ended, it took some time to figure out what to do.

Not all of us were equipped to transition to digital. I envied friends in the industry who had done that as early as 2008 to 2009, when not having a magazine was still unthinkable. The rest of us scrambled to take on every assignment we could get, getting directions from editors who were half our agethe Digital Natives. It was humbling, to say the least, but it was a learning process, too.

We all had devoted our time and lives to being editors, and once that era ended, it took some time to figure out what to do.

While magazines still exist in some indie shape or form in other countries, it isnt the same here. So, the print peeps had to move on. Many of us transferred to agencies and content creation offices. Some went into marketing and PR work, and are doing very well. The younger and more social-media-savvy ones became influencers (its not a bad word, mind you, there are still some pretty good influencers out there). Others, the lucky ones, stayed at home to create their own businesses and raise the children they had neglected for so long because of the hectic media lifestyle.

And on the few afternoons the former EICs would meet up for coffee, everyone dreamed about the salad days of the magazine, like some fantasy from an ancient time. But that was ita fantasy.

Personally, and objectively, I do think of the closure of print as a blessing for me. I am thankful that the web editors I work for appreciate the need for in-depth articles and not clickbait. There is no advertiser levelling, nor numbers or analytics to worry about. And even if one readerjust one readergets inspired by something that I write and put out on the web, then I believe I have succeeded.

Just dont tell the publishers about that. 🙂

Photographs courtesy of the author.

Excerpt from:
I lived through 20 years of print, and then online took over - ABS-CBN News

SPRINGFIELD At the funeral Tuesday of city councilor, Democratic activist and civil rights pioneer E. Henry Twiggs, the biblical words from the Second Epistle to Timothy reminded mourners of the man who has run his race and fought the good fight.

And I have kept the faith, the Apostle Paul wrote so long ago.

And on Tuesday, longtime friend of Twiggs, U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal had a slight turn on the familiar verse.

You have run your last campaign, Neal said.

Twiggs, 80, died Thursday, Nov. 21, at Mercy Medical Center due to complications from surgery. A native of Georgia who moved to Springfield in 1958, Twiggs returned to the South and marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the famous March on Washington in 1963 and the Selma to Montgomery March two years later.

His funeral was marked by a look back, and a call to continue Twiggs work.

Facing tear gas, police truncheons, and attack dogs, E. Henry was one of those who crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge during the Selma to Montgomery, Alabama march, his family wrote in his obituary. He worked with Dr. Martin Luther King and many other prominent activists helping organize voter registration drives, sit-ins, marches, and other actions throughout the region. He was an active participant in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom and strove to keep Dr. Kings dream alive as the Northeast Coordinator of the 1968 Poor Peoples Campaign March on Washington.

Twiggs served as manager of Riverview Projects during the late 1960s and developed housing through his work with Inner City Rehab. He was state Rep. Ben Swans chief of staff and a a longtime member of, and chairman, of the city Democratic Committee who campaigned for tirelessly for Democratic candidates.

Neal said he and Twiggs spent so much time campaigning together they could finish each others sentences.

The congressman recalled Twiggs humor. One day as the two were campaigning for Al Gore in the bitter New Hampshire cold, they found house after house with the lights on and a television blaring but no one answered the door.

Neal said he wondered why they were being turned away

Twiggs said it was because folks thought Neal was campaigning with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who shared a passing resemblance to Twiggs.

Neal said they eventually found someone to answer a door. And that Twiggs loved the work in precincts, the knocking on doors.

There would be no Deval Patrick, no Barack Obama without the paths that were paved by Henry Twiggs, Neal said.

Patrick, who is running for president, didnt attend Tuesdays funeral. But the former governor did share his sentiments with The Republican and MassLive at the time of Twiggs passing.

Henry was a source of encouragement, guidance and wisdom when I was first a candidate and throughout my years as governor, Patrick said. His high-pitched calls to action fired me and others up more than once.

Neals line about Obama and Patrick garnered applause from the scores of friends, family and political associates at St. Johns Congregational Church on 45 Hancock Ave.

As did Councilor Jesse Lederman when he asked current and former council members to stand and said its now their job to carry on with Twiggs work.

One of many councilors who considered Twiggs a mentor, Lederman said it had been hard for Twiggs in recent months to attend meetings and play his role facilitating difficult discussions.

In those late nights in the Council Chamber, we could see you struggling, Lederman said. You could have just gone home. But you stayed and did the job youd been elected to do.

Twiggs announced in April that he would not run for another term after a decade on the City Council.

Lederman said Twiggs wife, Karen, earned the title of 14th councilor on the 13-member board for her work in helping Henry through his last term.

In his remarks, Twiggs son Antonio Delesline recalled asking his father why he ran for council as a 70-year-old in 2009. Twiggs couldnt bear it, he told his son at the time, if someone else ended up as councilor for his neighborhood in Ward 4.

Delesline also recalled the words of King, words he said apply to his father, when King observed that everyone can be great because everyone can serve.

Twiggs casket Tuesday was surrounded by flowers and by the symbols of his Masonic involvement and also present was one of his fedoras. He was known in life for always being well-dressed and for his outfits to always include a natty fedora.

Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno referred to this habit, and to the fact that both he and Twiggs are the sons of barbers.

From one son of a barber to another, Sarno said. A tip of the hat.

Twiggs is survived by his wife, Karen R. Twiggs; his sister, Laverne Sparkman of Florida; daughter Cynthia Frazier Twiggs of North Charleston, South Carolina; son Antonio L. Delesine, daughter Dawana S. Twiggs of Fairfield, Alabama; and daughter Sonia Twiggs Richards of Cartersville, Georgia. He is also survived by two nieces and two nephews: Constance Twiggs Rowe, Demetra Lynn Twiggs, David Twiggs and Keith Sparkman, 13 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his parents, brother David, daughter Leatrice and her son Damiun, niece Laverne, nephew Chris and niece Tanya.

Go here to see the original:
Springfield says goodbye to E. Henry Twiggs; Youve run your last campaign - MassLive.com

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If youre a political junkie whos been watching every twist and turn in the Democratic primary race since the day after the 2018 midterm results cameand if those in your social media circle are the same wayyouve probably grown weary of the drawn-out campaign and wish people would start voting already. But keep in mind that many less engaged voters are just now beginning to tune in. Historically, early-state primary polls have only begun to have predictive value after Thanksgiving. That make sense when you consider that most people dont pick out their Halloween costumes in May or June.

Surveys show that theres an unusual degree of interest in the 2020 election, so its possible that normies started paying close attention earlier than usual this cycle, but its also possible that this post-holiday week marks an unofficial start of the contest for the Democratic nomination.

With that in mind, here are a few things that a political junkie should keep in mind about how the primary race stands among the broader Democratic electorate.

National polls dont mean much this far out

The latestQuinnipiac pollgot a lot of attention this week. It found that former VEEP Joe Biden had retaken the lead from Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Many people think Bidens persistent lead in the national polling averages indicates that hes very likely to become the Democratic nominee. But while a candidate would prefer to be ahead than behind, keep in mind that inQuinnipiacs Oct 29, 2003 release, Wesley Clark led the field with 17 percent, trailed by Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman.Dick Gephardt followed and then came John Kerry, the eventual nominee, sitting in 5th place.

In theirDecember 10, 2003 poll, Dean had jumped ahead of Clark with the support of 22 percent of likely primary voters. Kerrys support, meanwhile, had dropped from 10 to 8 percent, and while he was still in 5th place, that survey found him tied with Al Sharpton.

They never will

Polling can tell you something about a candidates appeal, but it cant shed much light on whats under the hood of their campaignson the quality of their field organizations. When people start casting ballots, some will overperform expectations and others will disappoint. Momentum is a creation of the political press, but its effects are realresults in early states influence the media coverage and that in turns shapes the perceptions of voters in later states.

So its quite likely that the race will be reshaped as voting moves first from lily-white Iowa and quirky New Hampshire to South Carolina and Nevada, and then when February turns to March, when a huge chunk of delegates will be awarded on Super Tuesday.

And of course unforeseeable events could also restructure the campaign entirely. Howard Dean was flying high early in 2004 after he won the Iowa Caucuses. Adam Mordecai, a Dean staffer in Iowa, would later recall, We felt like we were invincible. He just kept winning poll after poll. He was on every magazine cover. But then Dean gave a speech with a rousing finish that would become known as the Dean Scream, whichfascinated our superficial political pressand ultimately created a path for John Kerry.

Its a very fluid race

According tothe latest Quinnipiac poll, only 11 percent of Democratic primary voters are undecided. But that figure is misleading, because another 57 percent of respondents said that while they are backing a candidate now, they might change their minds. This means that when you read, candidate X is at 35 percent in poll Y, over half of those supporters areleaningtowards that candidate at this point.

Thats as true of the establishment as it is rank-and-file voters

Whenever a prominent Democrat endorses or criticizes a candidate or a pundit with a big platform declares that a campaign is either surging or lagging, some people will conclude that its proof that the establishment is coalescing around one campaign or another. Sensitivities about Democratic elites putting their collective thumb on the scale linger from 2016.

But 2020 is a very different race. AsI wrote back in August, in 2016, Hillary Clinton racked up amomentouslead in endorsements from elected officials and prominent party activists. But so far in this cycle, most of those influential voices have waited to see how things will shake out. And the endorsements that have come in so farare distributed much more broadly among the candidates. (More generally, its better to think of the partys establishment as a cluster of power centers that come to a consensus at times, rather than as a monolithic creature.)

Ideological lanes are a pundits fallacy (with a caveat)

A lot of faulty analysis is based on the idea that moderate candidates are battling each other to win the moderate lane and progressives are similarly vying for a discrete group of consistently progressive voters. This ubiquitous narrative is contradicted byresearch undertaken by political scientistsand by voters second choices in the polls. Among Biden supporters in the Morning Consult poll, for example, 26 percent cite Bernie Sanders as their second choice, 19 percent name Elizabeth Warren and only 12 percent say its Pete Buttigieg, who is frequently said to be the moderate alternative to Biden.

On average, primary voters arent very ideological. They select candidates based on all sorts of criteriacharisma, experience, oratory skills, perceived electability, etc.

But theres a caveat: the fact that theres so much lane-based analysis may signal to voters that a candidate is or isnt aligned with their political identity. (Also,Nate Silver arguesthe lanes are real when you account for ideology along [with] other dimensions.)

Most voters arent persuaded by policy (with a big caveat)

Studies find that a small share of the electorate base their votes primarily on whether a candidate agrees with them on a few hot-button issues likeabortionandguns. And there issome evidencethat marijuana legalization boosts turnout among younger voters andmay discourage third-party votingwhen its embraced by a Democratic candidate.

Buta growing body of researchsuggests that most voters align themselves with a candidate (or a faction or party), and then work backwards to support that candidates policy proposals.

But here, again, we have to acknowledge that the way the media covers an issue also shapes how voters perceive it, and possibly how they think about candidates who support or oppose it. (I will write more about this issue soon in relation to Medicare for All.)

Most polling of demographic subgroups is misleading

You might hear that Mayor Pete Buttigieg is polling at zero percent with African-Americans, for example, or that voters over age 65 in South Carolina hold this or that opinion. Keep in mind that in most polls, these results are based on small sub-samples from a larger survey and as a result, tend to have a lot of room for error.

Speaking of Buttigieg

Last month, when Pete Buttigieg was in fourth place in New Hampshire,I arguedthat despite enjoying a flurry of favorable media coverage, the South Bend, Indiana mayor had not yet broken into the top tier of candidates. Now that hes leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire, its probably safe to say that he has.

But Buttigieg still differs from the other top candidates in one important way: According toMorning Consult, more than a third of Democratic primary voters have either never heard of the guy (18 percent) or dont yet know enough about him to have formed an opinion (18 percent).

That means he has room to grow, but it also means that as more voters get to know him better he could prove to be a flash in the pan. How he does in the first two contests relative to his polling, and the results of South Carolina and Nevadathe other, more diverse February stateswill probably go further toward determining which how his candidacy proceeds than it might with a more established figure.

Electability is only ever clear in hindsight

Back in June,I arguedthat 2020 will be first and foremost a battle over Donald Trump and the political movement he has inspired. Polls show that both parties basesare fired up to a degree thats unprecedentedin the modern era.

The Democratic coalition is bigger, and Republicans know that.So while the quality of the Dems nominee matters at least at the margins, the outcome will probably come down to whether the backlash against Trump that led to Democratic wins in the off-year elections of 2017, 2018 and 2019 can overcome an enormous amount of voter suppression, targeted disinformation and other measures to curb turnout among Trumps opposition.

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then let us make a small request. Like you, we here at Raw Story believe in the power of progressive journalism and were investing in investigative reporting as other publications give it the ax. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnstons DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. Weve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. Weve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. We need your support to do what we do.

Raw Story is independent. You wont find mainstream media bias here. Unhinged from corporate overlords, we fight to ensure no one is forgotten.

We need your support to keep producing quality journalism and deepen our investigative reporting. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us in the future. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you.

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Here are 9 things you absolutely need to know about the 2020 Democratic primary race - Raw Story