IA- PPP: Warren 21, Buttigieg 20, Sanders 14, Biden 13

[Tintrlvr]

Damn, Buttigieg's favorability is through the roof, especially compared to anyone else; he's at 78-13 (+65), next best is Warren at 66-22 (+44).

Strong results for Klobuchar and Steyer, too.

[Tintrlvr]

Is this the last poll Steyer needed for the December debate?

This isn't a qualifying poll.

[Tintrlvr]

IA isn’t a good state for Biden, but he really doesn’t need to do well there (or NH) as long as he doesn’t underperform in NV, SC, and on Super Tuesday.

Well, I tend to agree, but it may cost him so much momentum that support in other states shift. Too bad South Carolina isn't the second state to vote.

Demographics matter far more than any supposed "momentum," which is why you’ll see Biden struggling in IA but handily beating his opponents in NC. There’s a reason Clinton didn’t collapse in NV and SC even after Sanders had already outperformed expectations in IA and especially NH.

If voters shifted their votes as a result of earlier primaries, could the party’s nomination have gone to a different candidate if different states had voted sooner? The new study suggests that the answer is no.

“During the 2016 election, the word ‘momentum’ was often used to predict or explain the outcome of a primary election, but it was never really clear whether voters were actually casting votes based on a candidate’s previous performance,” says Josh Clinton, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. [...]

To answer this question, the researchers mined a huge trove of survey data—more than 325,000 interviews, or nearly 1,700 per day—collected nearly every day starting in December of 2015 and continuing throughout the 2016 primary election using NBC News/SurveyMonkey tracking polls that they helped write. The unprecedented size and scope of the data allowed researchers to track candidates’ support throughout the primary season for a demographically balanced sample of the US electorate. [...]

“We again found no evidence that voters were reacting to debate performances during the time period we examined,” Clinton says. “By the time of the Iowa caucuses, most voters seemed to have a good sense of who they supported. Voters were not supporting candidates because they were winning.”

When candidates did win several primaries in a row, Clinton says, the reason was usually because those states had similar electorates, not because the voters in later primaries were drawn to winning candidates. And when a candidate did start to win a greater percentage of the vote, he says, it was because other candidates had dropped out and the field was smaller.

https://www.futurity.org/2016-primaries-momentum-2118202/

Of course this is not to say that Biden shouldn’t be concerned about his IA numbers, but it’s important to put things in perspective.

Momentum matters a lot more in multi-cornered races. 2016 (and 2008, to a lesser degree) was a two-person race (on the Democratic side) from very early on, long before Iowa. You're right that voters don't switch often between the top two candidates because of momentum. But, for example, a Warren>Buttigieg>Sanders>Biden result in Iowa would probably result in a significant number of Sanders and Biden supporters switching to the one of the perceived "top two" candidates, especially if voters and the media nationally were surprised by the result (e.g., if Buttigieg getting second or winning is not priced in to voters' expectations). You've seen this happen on the Republican side a lot in each of 2008, 2012 and 2016. The Democrats just haven't had a good multi-cornered slugfest primary in while (2004 was the last one).