John Delaney, the former Maryland congressman, has announced he is dropping out of the Democratic presidential primary race days before the first caucuses in Iowa.
The multimillionaire banking entrepreneur has poured millions of dollars of his own money into his campaign since he officially kicked off the race in July 2017, and delivered a message of pragmatism in an attempt to appeal to independents and moderate Republicans.
But in a statement issued on Friday, his campaign said it had conducted analysis that indicated his support was still “not sufficient to meet the 15% viability” threshold needed to make it through the first round of voting in Monday’s Iowa caucuses.
The statement said he did not want to prevent other candidates from meeting the threshold, especially in rural areas. But it is unclear what impact Delaney would have had, especially given he had been polling at an average of about 1%.
Delaney had visited all 99 counties in Iowa as part of his quixotic, long-shot presidential campaign. But in a recent average of national polls that had asked Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters whether they had a favorable opinion of candidates, less than 40% of said they knew enough about Delaney to form an opinion about him.
