How many Democrats are running for president? It’s not a trick question. And it’s not an easy question to answer.
Unfortunately, it’s also not a question we can really avoid. We’ll be writing about the Democratic primary for the next [checks notes] 16 months here at FiveThirtyEight, until the Democratic National Convention is held next July in Milwaukee. We’ll be making thousands of charts and graphics featuring these candidates, taping hundreds of podcast segments about them, and collecting heaps of data on their activities. While there’s some room for flexibility — I can mention Marianne Williamson’s name in passing without committing FiveThirtyEight to write a 2,000-word feature about her — we need to make a distinction between “major” candidates and everyone else for a lot of what we’re doing.
It would be nice to be extra inclusive, but that gets out of hand quickly. According to the Federal Election Commission, there were actually 209 (!) Democrats1 who had filed paperwork to run for president or form an exploratory committee as of last Friday afternoon, including luminaries such as Gidget Groendyk, Maayan Z. Zik, John Martini and Dakoda Foxx.