Even though trying to predict who will be the Democratic nominee is something of a fool's errand, I do want to give my opinions on who I think is doing the best at this moment in the race. Part of my motivation is to help convince voters who are overly concerned about electability that some of the candidates they're worried about have a really good chance to win support. I think that a lot of voters are really bad at judging a candidate's electoral chances in early stages, and I wish more people would vote for the candidate that they'd choose if 'they had a magic wand' that could make anyone president. Have more faith in your fellow voters! So below are my tiers (modeled after Nate Silver's on FiveThirtyEight) that I think best captures the state of the Democratic field.

Tier	Candidate A	Candidate B	Candidate C
1	Joe Biden	Elizabeth Warren	Bernie Sanders
2	Kamala Harris	Pete Buttigeig	Amy Klobuchar
3	Julian Castro	Cory Booker	Beto O'Rourke

I disagree with Silver and a couple of other political scientists I'll mention below with some of my choices. First, I firmly have Warren and Sanders in the same tier as Biden. While the Monmouth Poll was certainly an outlier (I explain why here), I think it does have some relevance to the race. Sanders has the most widespread appeal and fervent donor base in the race at the moment, while Warren's campaign has similar appeal and the best organization. Despite Biden's hold on the polls, I think Warren and Sanders are his most powerful competitors.

I no longer think that Harris is worth having in the top tier. Her drop in the polls after her disastrous performance in July really harmed her candidacy. The attacks on her past record by Gabbard, Biden's better job at rebutting her major concerns, her flip flops on Medicare for All, and her subsequent issues with the press since the debate have harmed her ability to grow her appeal. I'm sure there are some passionate supporters still out there who would like to see her president, I just can't see them forming a base beyond what Harris already has. She will likely continue to be a force in the race as the firm fourth place until October - pending her performance in the September debates. Those will likely be her last chance to turn things around.

Buttigieg's flown under the radar for the whole summer. Despite posting the best fundraising of any candidate at the end of the second quarter, his campaign has been strangely low key. If I had to guess, he's funneling all of that money into a Warren-like strategy of gradual momentum enabled by his funding. He's probably been courting serious policy analysts and on-the-ground experts in Iowa and New Hampshire. Like Warren, he's intelligently tackling the field and trying to enable his campaign to go beyond solitary bumps that just end up reverting back to the norm. I wouldn't be surprised if his campaign starts catching fire again once the next round of debates comes around. $25 million dollars in campaign funds doesn’t just fizzle out.

Everybody kind of agrees that those five above are the frontrunners. The rest only have slim chances of catching fire. The main outlier here is Klobuchar. Unlike a lot of pundits, I think her chances of remaining a formidable challenger are greater than the rest of them combined. She's from Minnesota, which gives her a backyard advantage in Iowa. Her major concerns are rural, which Iowa voters have stated they want more focus on. She's polling well enough while still having a lack of name recognition, which implies that she has a high ceiling of support. I think her pragmatic progressive stance might be enough to siphon voters off of Biden where many others failed. After all, Biden's a Wall Street ally from the coasts. Iowa still has the capacity to surprise, and I wouldn't count Klobuchar out. I rated her above Booker and O'Rourke because their appeal is so limited by the other candidates in the race. Buttigieg has essentially taken up O'Rourke's support, while Biden and Harris are both more appealing to Booker's constituencies than he is.

O'Rourke and Booker's time has passed. Even though they've both done fine in the debates over the summer, neither of their candidacies have caught fire. I think that's as good of an indicator as any that their time has passed. I can't see any pocket of voters in any of the early states that might make a difference to their campaigns, and neither of them is popular outside of their home states. I'm a bit more bullish on Booker than O'Rourke, simply because of all the endorsements from his colleagues that he's accumulated throughout the race. With the O'Rourke's recent ejection of a Breitbart journalist, I think his candidacy will flame out soon.

The wild card in this is Julian Castro, who I rate higher than both O'Rourke and Booker despite their advantage in the polls. This is partly because he's the first and only Democratic Hispanic candidate running in the race. While Hispanic voters largely don't coalesce around a single party, much less a candidate - I think most of the pundits overlook the fact that most Cubans favor Republicans while Mexicans and Boricuas vote Democratic, and just lump them all in the same category. It is this kind of superficial analysis of Hispanic voters that might give Castro an edge, especially in Nevada and California. Nevada's Hispanic population hasn't really played a big role in presidential elections - but this one concerns Trump. Trump is underwater with Latinx voters and I can see many of them nominating Castro as a contrast. One of the main reasons I don't think Castro's caught on in the Hispanic lane is mostly because he doesn't have a national profile yet. Once he boosts his name recognition, I think things might change.

My predictions for who will be on top at the end of the Fall? I think Buttigieg will surprise and surge once again, and either take Sanders' (bullish prediction, if Harris completely flops in the Fall debates) or Harris' place (if she does fine). Like I said above, Harris' challenges this summer make it unlikely she can grow her appeal, while Buttigieg has a very high ceiling. You might look at that and say: 'He's not taking away votes from Sanders, why do you have Buttigieg above him!?' I make that prediction because Sanders, like Harris, has a ceiling. His performance up till now has been stable. The future frontrunners in my view are the ones who can best raise their support through moderate, consistent gains. I think that Buttigieg, like Warren, can do this, and as he convinces supporters from Biden and Harris to jump ship he'll grab third place. This becomes all the more likely when you consider O'Rourke's initial appeal (which he largely stole) and the immense amount of money he raised this year.

I think Warren might actually replace Biden by the year's end, just because he won't perform well with her on the stage next to him. I think she'll finally siphon away the remaining Harris and Sanders votes she needs to convince the electorate she's the best person to take on Trump. The debates will be the beginning of the end for Biden and her performance will put any remaining concerns about her performance to rest.

There's one major event that can shatter these projections, and it has to do with Warren's Achilles Heel. Her claims of Native American ancestry have yet to come up on the campaign. Harris and Biden, with their current and potential appeal to POCs and the most to lose from her rise, might bring these up in the debates. If they manage to do this masterfully, without bringing their own messy credentials into the argument, it could demolish Warren's entire campaign by taking away from her strengths and focusing the conversation on her weaknesses. My entire prediction rests on Harris collapsing and Biden fading - if the pair manage to take Warren down this way, the situation would be reversed. However, I do not think they will take this approach. Warren's managed to turn most attacks on her claims of Cherokee ancestry against her opponents - and the last thing Biden and Harris want is extensive looks into their own pasts. Part of the reason that many people of color aren't really passionate about the candidates is that all of their options don't have the same clean slate as Obama coming into the election.

Finally, I think that Harris and Biden's fade will result in new attention on Klobuchar (for Biden voters) and Castro (for Harris voters). This just might vault them into solid positions in the second tier, but that would mean an extremely sharp drop for Biden and Harris. Sanders is going to be 3rd (if Buttigieg fails) or 4th (if he succeeds) no matter what. His base of support is just that strong and has almost no intersections with the rest of the Democratic candidates. Booker and O'Rourke will probably give up their campaigns by the end of the year. Castro and Klobuchar might do the same because Harris' and Biden's support just isn't big enough to sustain them (and it'll likely go to Warren and Buttigieg instead). Thus, my end of the year tiers are:

Tier	Candidate A	Candidate B	Candidate C
1	Elizabeth Warren	Joe Biden	Pete Buttigeig
2	Bernie Sanders	Amy Klobuchar	Kamala Harris
3	Julian Castro	Cory Booker	Beto O'Rourke