Here’s what really just changed for Pete Buttigieg
Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders are now both declaring victory in the withering punchline that is the Democratic 2020 Iowa caucus. Considering they’ll get a nearly equal number of delegates no matter which of them is ultimately named the official winner, it may not even matter. The question is what happens now that Buttigieg has performed so much better in Iowa than anyone was expecting.
The demographics and format in Iowa are almost perfectly suited to Bernie’s candidacy, and the polls said he’d win Iowa by a few points, so his close first place or close second place in the state doesn’t tell us much. The polls predict he’ll win next week in his backyard of New Hampshire, and if that holds true, it won’t tell us much either. Bernie is down by fourteen points in the polls in South Carolina. If that holds true it’ll mean he’s doing just as poorly with black voters as he did in 2016, and that he’ll have no chance at the nomination. The reality is that Bernie has to sharply outperform his South Carolina poll numbers in order to have a shot. But again, the story coming out of Iowa is Buttigieg’s surprise finish.
The pollsters vastly underestimated Buttigieg’s viability in Iowa. The question now is whether this was merely a function of the gibberish Iowa caucus format, or if Buttigieg’s poll numbers are inaccurately low across the nation. He’s currently polling third in New Hampshire, ten points off the lead. If he finishes in, say, a strong second place there, it’ll tell us that he really is more popular than we all thought – at least with white voters. The polls in South Carolina have Buttigieg twenty-five points behind. If he finishes that poorly there, he’ll wash out on Super Tuesday and be finished. But if Buttigieg significantly outperforms with black voters in South Carolina, it’ll mean he’s looking at highly viable candidacy.
The kicker is that Joe Biden is still leading the entire field South Carolina by double digits. If Biden does win the state by that large of a margin, it’ll mean that his distinct lack of popularity with white caucus-goers in Iowa will have had no impact on his dominant popularity with black Democratic voters, and it’ll mean that Biden is still on track to win the nomination. That may not sound correct, given all doomsday headlines about Biden’s candidacy this week, but black voters generally choose the Democratic nominee. Of course if this happens, the media will paint it as a miracle comeback for Biden, when in reality it’ll merely be yet another reminder that Iowa and New Hampshire don’t tell us much about who’s going to be the nominee.
It’s difficult to imagine voters in South Carolina saying to themselves, “Well, I wasn’t going to vote for Pete Buttigieg, but now that some people in an Iowa gymnasium have gotten behind him, I’ll vote for him too.” The concept of momentum is sort of a myth in the early states; no one yet feels like they’ll be wasting their vote if they go with a big-name candidate who didn’t do well in the last state. Momentum only comes into play later, when someone is running away with the delegate count. The big question for Buttigieg continues to be whether his poll numbers were wrong just in Iowa, or if they’re wrong across the board and he’s been more popular nationally all along than pollsters knew.
