"[W]hat happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period. The results were too close not to do a complete audit. This is not a — this is not, like, a winner-take-all thing. I think where we now stand... you have 22 delegates, I have 20 delegates. We need 2,500 delegates to win the nomination. You know, so this is not this is not the biggest deal in the world."
To clarify, that quote from Bernie Sanders was on February 4, 2016 during the Post-Iowa, Pre-New Hampshire debate. The 2016 Iowa caucus was basically a tie and so was the 2020 Iowa caucus. The screw up with the app and the delay in announcing results was bad in the moment but it will be forgotten soon enough. (Although I hope the Democratic party remember it when slating the next primary calendar. Iowa needs to go to the back of the line.)
I. Iowa Results.
The results are pretty muddled. I will discuss each candidate with some reference to my predictions in the last post.
1. Pete Buttigieg (26.2%, 13 or 14 delegates).
Buttigieg had a good night, finishing in a de-facto tie with Bernie Sanders. That's good for him, because a poor result in Iowa would have been fatal to his candidacy. He "won" to fight another day at least, and there is some evidence of an uptick in his New Hampshire numbers. But I don't think he's going to have a long and deep run. His victory speech in Iowa rubbed people the wrong way, but he needed to do it because his fund raising has been sluggish.
I predicted he'd come 3rd with 17%, so a win/tie at 26 is a very good result.
2. Bernie Sanders (26.1% 12 or 13 delegates).
He did fine. He can make an honest claim of winning the raw vote, and in a virtual tie for delegates. His campaign did well at the satellite locations and turned out enough people to (almost) win. But turnout was lower than expected and the base theory of his campaign is that he is capable of turning out young and infrequent voters. Four years ago about 85,000 people turned up to caucus for him. This week, only about 26,000 chose him among a much larger field. Perhaps more troubling is that he didn't seem to gain a lot of voters between the 1st and 2nd rounds of voting, where Biden/Klobuchar and Warren voters gravitated towards Buttigieg, giving him the delegate lead.
I predicted he would win with 28%, so a very close 2nd with 26% is mildly disappointing. But he should win New Hampshire and the poor showing by Biden has pushed him into the lead of the betting markets.
3. Elizabeth Warren (18%, 8 delegates).
The good news is that she did better than her polling predicted. But she was pretty far off the lead and Bernie Sanders seems to be the clear choice of the progressive wing of the party. This is an adequate result for her and she will probably stick around past the early primaries.
I predicted she would be 4th with 14%, so she exceeded that.
4. Joe Biden (15.8%, 6 delegates).
He shit the bed. Iowa was not great for him demographically but he also failed to execute a good ground game, and that led to him underperforming. At the moment, he looks weak. And there's not much reason to think that New Hampshire will be much better for him. He is going to stick around and make his stand in South Carolina. But he needs a stronger result in New Hampshire than this.
I predicted he would be 2nd with 23%, so this is a very bad result.
5. Amy Klobuchar (12.3%, 1 delegate).
This was an adequate result. She was the first to take the podium on caucus night, taking advantage of the lack of results to claim that she had finished strong and was ready to move on to New Hampshire with momentum. She also won a delegate, which is significant because it gives her a guaranteed spot in the Nevada debate.
She also should be heartened by the Biden number. If Biden slips, Klobuchar could stand to gain a lot of his voters. Last night's debate in New Hampshire went very well for her and she was the overwhelming favorite of the "undecided" voters in the various TV audiences. Her campaign raised over a million dollars in just a few hours after the debate. If she can move up at all in NH, then she is probably going to stay in until at least Super Tuesday.
I predicted that she would be 5th with 12%, so I pretty much nailed that.
And for the non-delegate candidates:
These two chumps tried to compete in Iowa and came away with nothing for their efforts.
6. Andrew Yang 1%, Hardly surprising but still gratifying to see.
7. Tom Steyer 0.3% Embarrassing.
The Non-Iowa candidates.
Four of the remaining 11 candidates decided to mostly skip Iowa in order to concentrate on New Hampshire, or in Bloomberg's case, the Super Tuesday States.
8. Tulsi Gabbard A grand total of 334 people turned up to caucus for her. That is 0.2%, which is 0.2% more than she deserved.
9. Michael Bloomberg
10. Michael Bennet
11, Deval Patrick
II. New Hampsire Predictions.
Bernie winning seems to be the only sure thing here. The post-Iowa polls suggest that Bernie will win and Pete will come second. That would be the traditional revers of the Iowa result, but I think the margin should be significant. In fact I think Pete is more likely to finish 3rd than to win.
The hardest candidate to hadicap is Biden. New Hampshire loves to reject the Iowa winner, so maybe he will bounce up to 2nd. But he also looks weak and feels vulnerable. Another 4th place finish would be a disaster. If he does fnish 4th (or 5th) it will be interesting to see where his voters go-to Buttigieg, Klobuchar or Warren.
Without further ado, here is the official prediction for New Hampshire.
1. Bernie Sanders 28%.
2. Joe Biden 20%
3. Pete Buttigieg 16%
4. Elizabeth Warren 14%
5. Amy Klobuchar 11%
6. Yang 4%
7. Steyer 3%
8. Gabbard 2%
8. Patrick 1%
10. Bennet 0.3%
How to judge the results of each serious candidate:
- CANDIDATE GOOD ADEQUATE BAD
- SANDERS WIN 2ND 3RD
- BIDEN 2ND 3RD 4TH
- BUTTIGIEG 2ND 3RD 4TH
- WARREN 3RD 4TH 5TH
- KLOBUCHAR 3RD 4TH 5TH
*If anyone else finishes in the top 5, then the candidates they beat will probably have to drop out.
III. Someone Has to Win This Thing.
Before Iowa, Joe Biden was the consensus front-runner. That is no longer the case. So far the race has been more like two separate races for the wings of the party. On the left, Bernie Sanders has solidified his base and has a clear lead over Elizabeth Warren. In the center, Biden has faltered, with Buttigieg and Klobuchare both exceeding early expectations. And Michael Bloomberg is waiting in the wings to further confuse that end of the pool.
I think there are four likely outcomes to this race:
1. Bernie Sanders wins a narrow majority after a potracted primary race. (40% chance)
2. The primaries end with no candidate having obtained a majority. (30% chance)
3. Joe Biden consolidates the center and wins a majority of delegates. (25% chance)
4. Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg win a combined majority of delegates and run on the same ticket (5%)
I hate that this gives short shrift to Elizabeth Warren. Maybe she can surprisse in New Hampshire and knock some of the smaller candidates out of the race early. If it becomes a head to head race between Sanders and Warren, some moderates will rally to her. But I don't think it's going to happen. But I have a hard time seeing her cobble together a delegate majority. Bernie owns all the real estate to her left and there are several viable options to her right. I don't think this is her year.
Scenario number two is most interesting. The current projections on 538.com have Bernie winning almost 42% of the delegates and Joe Biden winning 25%. Buttigies and Warren each winning about 11% and Bloomberg winning about 9%. (These numbers will change wildly if any of the top candidates drop out before Super Tuesday.)
The easiest mathematical solution is a Sanders-Warren ticket. But there is a huge problem with that ticket. Both Vermont and Massachussets have Republican governors. If that ticket wins, it will immediately cost the Democratic party two senate seats. In Massachussets, the interim senator will sit for about 100 days. In Vermont for up to six months. Even if the Democrats win both special elections, the Warren-Sanders administration will be handicapped for the "First 100 days" of its term. The party will not want to sign on to that.
So if that ticket doesn't happen, what does the party do? If Bernie is very close to 50% of the delegates, he can probably pull it off. But if he is 300 or 400 delegates short, the party will be torn between rallying to him and pissing off his base. The only thing we know for sure, is that Bernie will fight to the last possible moment, just as he did in 2016.
The Party regulars will not want to give it to Bernie for a variety of reasons. The simplest being that he is not a Democrat and he cares nothing about the party as an institution. That is alienating, and for good reason. (Imagine running for president of the local Ozzy Osbourne fan club with a platform of, "I don't care for Black Sabbath.")
If Biden has a plurality of the delegates, he will probably be the nominee. He can offer Veep to Klobuchar, who might control 50 or 100 delegates and who is well-liked by the establishment. And Buttigieg might realize that his future is long and bright so long as he doens't rock the boat. Bloomberg would also be fine with a Biden-Klobuchar ticket. So I think that's an easy sell.
But if the number really look like Nate Silver's forecast, the party might need to turn to a compromise candidate. It would be a huge risk to run an unvetted candidate, but let's consider some of the options.
Some of the best choices have probably taken themselves out of the running by having run in this race on their own. Imagine a world in which the Democratic party needed to win with an unknown face who could do well in the Midwest, had no obvious diaqualifying qualities and appealed to most of the Democratic base? Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris and Deval Partick all fit that description on paper. But ti would be hard for the party to foist a candidate on the general public who had been rejected by the voters.
Other possiblities:
1. Sherrod Brown. This would cost the party a senate seate for 2 full years but he has a foot in both worlds of the party and he might make Ohio competitive. He's probably the best option in this scenario, if only because the decison to not run in this verkhata primary makes him look 10 IQ points smarter.
2. Stacey Abrams. The party faithful will embrace her. But running a black woman whose highest electoral win is a state legislture race is very, very risky. Definitely on the VP short list though.
3. Tom Wolf. Let me save you a Google. He is the governor of Pennsyvlania. He's sane, sober and popular in one of the most important swing states. He's also both bald and bland, so he won't excite anyone. But he has to be considered.
4. Chris Murphy. He doesn't put any swing states in play but he's young and handsome and moderate. His very public advocacy of gun control would help him with surubabn women but would also hurt him in some of the swing states that the Dems need to win back. He is viable.
5. Tammy Baldwin. On the one hand, she is a popular senator twice elected in the 2016 tipping poin state of Wisconsin. On the other, she is lesbian and some people will think that's risky. She is also unmarried and childless, which I do believe are impediments to national candidates.
IV. The Old Metrics.
This is the 12th post I've done on the Democratic field, so I might as well update my usual standings. There have been changes, after all.
A. The Horse Race, Take 12
The Top Tier (Front-Runners)
1. Bernie Sanders (up from 2)
2. Joe Biden (Down from 1)
3. Pete Buttigieg (Up from 5)
4. Mike Bloomberg
Tier Two (The Alternatives)
5. Elizabeh Warren (Down from 4) This just does not seem to be her year. But if she does well in NH, I will happily put her back in the top tier.
6. Amy Klobuchar.
She has qualified for every debate stage (sometimes just barely) and she won an delegate in Iowa (just barely.) But she needs to actually lap some people in NH.
Tier Three; The Novelty Candidates.
7. Tom Steyer. (Up from 10) He's the rich weirdo.
8. Andrew Yang (Up from 9) He's the amiable weirdo.
9. Tulsi Gabbard (Up from 11) She's the malevlolent weirdo.
Tier Four: The Long Shots.
10. Deval Patrick (Down from 8)
11. Michael Bennet (Down from 7)
Note: I moved the Novelty Candidates ahead of the Long Shots. Now that we have some votes on the board, it's pretty obvious that Patrick and Bennet are not going to catch fire with the electorate. Steyer migth be committed to setting 20% of his fortune on fire, so he could hang around for awhiel. Tulsi and Yang have never been serious about running for president, but it might serve their actual agenda to pretend to keep running for awhile.
B. The Power Rankings, Take 11.
These are just my personal preferences among the remaining candidates.
1. Amy Klobuchar
2. Michael Bennet
3. Deval Patrick (Up from 7)
4. Joe Biden (Down from 3)
5. Pete Buttigieg (Down from 4)
6. Elizabeth Warren (Down from 5)
7. Michael Bloomberg (Up from 9)
8. Bernie Sanders (Down from 6)
9. Tome Steyer (Down from 8)
10. Andrew Yang
11. Tulsi Gabbard
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