February 5, 2020 Bernie, Buttigieg, Biden, Bloomberg, and Brokered Convention What's Happening: After the Iowa caucus on Monday, it's a bedlam of B's in the Democratic primary for president. Why It Matters: The Iowa caucus was a mess, leaving no one in the field with a particularly good chance of winning the nomination right now. With 75 percent of the precincts reporting from the Iowa caucus, it's a split decision between former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in third, former Vice President Joe Biden in fourth, and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) in fifth. The purpose of the Iowa caucus is not the accumulation of delegates, which only accounts for 1.0 percent of pledged delegates available in the primary contest, but to set the initial narrative of how the primary will unfold, and as the saying goes, first impressions are everything. The focus after Iowa is on Bernie, Buttigieg, Biden, and Bloomberg, each with a potential path but also serious roadblocks in getting to the nomination. Right now, the Iowa caucus has left several competing questions around the viability of these candidates, rather than definitive narratives. No candidate has better odds than the field in winning the nomination at this point, with the specter of no candidate reaching a majority of pledged delegates also rising. What's Next: All the candidates, except for Bloomberg, are now campaigning in New Hampshire as its primary occurs next Tuesday. Before that, there will be a Democratic debate on Friday. The dust has yet to settle from the Iowa caucus. New Hampshire could be do or die for several candidates, so as tame as the primary has been among the candidates, there will likely be some sharp elbows and increased scrutiny for several of the candidates in the debate and the media. Whether that will be enough to sway voters or the Democratic establishment one way or another to provide some clarity to the race remains to be seen. The Six-Week Primary Outlook Sabato's Crystal Ball published a calendar of the primary schedule, dividing it up into key dates. With 3,979 pledged delegates available in 57 primary contests, a candidate needs a 1,991 majority to win the nomination on the first round of ballots. While the primary contest lasts until June 6th, 61.5 percent of the pledged delegates will be awarded in just the next six weeks. This can be broken down into four groups: the February early states (which can be broken down further), Super Tuesday on March 3rd, March 10th, and a mini Super Tuesday on March 17th. The February early state contests only account for 3.9 percent of the total delegates awarded in the primary process, hardly a big vote count. But when there's a large field and a front-loaded national primary calendar in March, the February early states play a critical role in winnowing the field and assigning frontrunner status to candidates. Unfortunately for Democrats, the Iowa caucus did not winnow the field, although it did give the race something of a frontrunner. The Iowa caucus is naturally something of a mess, but seen as a quirky mess. But with a technology malfunction that delayed the results, the results were overshadowed by the chaos of the caucus. Not helping matters in forming a clear narrative was that there were three reported results this year. In addition to the state- delegate equivalents (SDEs) that are usually the only reported results, there were the first alignment and final alignment popular vote. With 75 percent of the precincts reporting, this has led to a split decision among SDEs/first alignment/final alignment percentages: Buttigieg: 26.9/21.5/25.3 Sanders: 25.2/24.3/26.1 Warren: 18.2/18.6/20.4 Biden: 15.6/14.8/13.5 Klobuchar: 12.5/12.7/12.3 Yang: 1.0/5.2/1.1 Steyer: 0.3/1.7/0.2 These results and processes have created several competing narratives that could shape the race in New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. These include Sanders winning, Biden losing, Buttigieg winning, the Iowa caucus losing, Bloomberg winning, and a brokered convention winning. We will know soon enough, through polls, debates, fundraising, endorsements, and most important of all upcoming primaries, which of these potential narratives holds the most weight. The FiveThirtyEight primary forecast model has been frozen due to the lack of complete results from Iowa. But in looking at potential final caucus outcomes, the FiveThirtyEight model has the following odds for who wins a majority of pledged delegates: A split decision in Iowa: Sanders - 48 percent, No Majority - 23 percent, Biden - 17 percent, Buttigieg - 5 percent, Warren - 7 percent, Other - <1 percent A clean win for Sanders: Sanders - 64 percent, No Majority - 16 percent, Biden - 14 percent, Buttigieg - 1 percent, Warren - 6 percent, Other - <1 percent A clean win for Buttigieg: Sanders - 36 percent, No Majority - 26 percent, Biden - 21 percent, Buttigieg - 10 percent, Warren - 7 percent, Other - <1 percent Bernie is Something of a Frontrunner...For Now Sanders was seen as the favorite to win Iowa coming into the caucus on Monday and he performed at expectations (or even slightly above the final RealClearPolitics polling average). Importantly for him, he had a clear win over Warren in what can be seen as a race for the progressive wing of the party while Buttigieg had a clear win over Biden, only further muddying the race for the moderate wing. Still, the delayed results and controversy around the Iowa caucus voting and Buttigieg also laying claim to winning creates ambiguity of a pro-Sanders media narrative and bounce coming out of Iowa. But that also may be to the benefit of Sanders. If he was the clear winner, he would surely receive the scrutiny of being the frontrunner. He likely still will (just see President Trump's State of the Union address that was heavy on the anti-socialist rhetoric). But at the moment, perhaps no other candidate benefits more from a muddled field than Sanders. He has more money and a more committed base than his other early state competitors. Having someone like Buttigieg being his main competitor in Iowa and New Hampshire is the ideal scenario, as there is little crossover between Buttigieg and Sanders voters but Buttigieg does take away votes from Biden, Warren, and Klobuchar (and Bloomberg after February). Another benefit for Sanders is that the next state up, New Hampshire, is one of his strongest states. He won 60 percent of the New Hampshire vote in the 2016 primary against Hillary Clinton, he's a neighboring senator from Vermont, and it's a partially open primary, meaning that independents can vote, which is part of the Independent senator from Vermont's base. If Sanders were to win New Hampshire, he would be on good footing going into the Nevada caucus. Just as important as winning New Hampshire, how everyone else does matters too. Sanders would again hope that his main competition is Buttigieg. If Warren were to finish in fourth place or a distant third, there's little hope in her campaign finding a narrative that could catapult her back into contention. However, she may stick around, particularly if Biden does poorly in New Hampshire, as she could make a case of being a more acceptable alternative to Sanders. Right now, a concerted "Stop Sanders" movement from the Democrats is highly unlikely to materialize before New Hampshire. Given the power of the Nevada Democratic Party, there could be some effort in Nevada, but Sanders has strong support among Latinos and union workers. Sanders is not expected to win South Carolina, leaving Super Tuesday and beyond to be time for an anti-Sanders push. Any push could come too little too late for anti- Sanders Democrats though without fully coalescing behind one candidate. Additionally, there are major concerns among the Democratic establishment about a full-throttled anti- Sanders push, according to the Washington Post, with concerns that the push would backfire or leave Sanders supporters bitter and unlikely to support the Democratic candidate in the general election against Trump. The question of Sanders building his base of support is still up in the air. A Warren collapse could provide greater support, and winning begets winning if he can win in New Hampshire and Nevada. However, it's too early to tell if his Iowa co-win has translated into greater national support or if a game of attrition remains his best bet for clinching the nomination. Biden and the Democratic Establishment Need to Get Their Act Together At a campaign event in New Hampshire today, Biden said, "I’m not going to sugarcoat it, we took a gut punch in Iowa." While there are several muddled storylines coming from Iowa, one clear one was Biden's poor performance. It wasn't just the poor performance, but underperforming expectations. Compared to the RealClearPolitics Iowa polling average, Biden was the only candidate among the top five to underperform his final polling aggregate results. In the pecking order, Biden only improved by one spot from his fifth- place finish in 2008, when he promptly dropped out. Post-Iowa autopsies show the lack of enthusiasm and ground game compared to his competitors came back to haunt him in a caucus that is driven by an enthusiastic organization. It was a gut punch for sure. However, it was not a fatal punch, at least not yet. The challenge for Biden is that the narrative can easily get worse for him rather than better.