IA-NYT/Siena: Tight 4-way-race

[Cinemark]

Obama was actually ahead in Iowa polls prior to the caucus. I think Mayor Pete certainly has a good shot of winning, but Obama winning Iowa wasn't that much of a surprise. The big surprise was Clinton coming in third, something Biden could very well replicate.

[Tintrlvr]

Obama was actually ahead in Iowa polls prior to the caucus. I think Mayor Pete certainly has a good shot of winning, but Obama winning Iowa wasn't that much of a surprise. The big surprise was Clinton coming in third, something Biden could very well replicate.

it was a more mixed bag. Clinton still led in some polls even right before caucus day, and very few polls gave Obama a lead close to his ultimate margin, which came as a surprise. In November, he was not leading but instead was roughly tied with Edwards for second.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statewide_opinion_polling_for_the_January_2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Iowa

Discounting ARG (lol), Zogby (lol), Research 2000 (proven to have been faking) and Strategic Vision (proven to have been faking) (NB: 2008 was a polling wasteland), the polls conducted after Christmas had:

Des Moines Register: Obama+7 over Clinton
CNN: Clinton+2 over Obama
Insider Advantage: Clinton+1 over Edwards with Obama in a distant third
MSNBC/Mason-Dixon: Edwards+1 over Clinton with Obama one point further back; with second preferences, it was Edwards+7 over both Clinton and Obama.

[Cinemark]

Obama was actually ahead in Iowa polls prior to the caucus. I think Mayor Pete certainly has a good shot of winning, but Obama winning Iowa wasn't that much of a surprise. The big surprise was Clinton coming in third, something Biden could very well replicate.

it was a more mixed bag. Clinton still lead in some polls even right before caucus day, and very few polls gave Obama a lead close to his ultimate margin, which came as a surprise. In November, he was not leading but instead was roughly tied with Edwards for second.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statewide_opinion_polling_for_the_January_2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Iowa

I was going by the final rcp aggregate. But yeah, definitely seems like Hillary was the favorite late December.

But more proof Ann Selzer is the authority on all things Iowa.

[Tintrlvr]

Incidentally, the NYT had a poll right around now in Iowa in 2008:

Clinton 25%
Edwards 23%
Obama 22%
Richardson 12%
Biden 4%
Kucinich 1%
Dodd 1%
Undecided 12%

[Grumpier Than Thou]

Incidentally, the NYT had a poll right around now in Iowa in 2008:

Clinton 25%
Edwards 23%
Obama 22%
Richardson 12%
Biden 4%
Kucinich 1%
Dodd 1%
Undecided 12%

(This was simultaneous with Richardson's national peak, thus his relatively strong showing.)

Clinton - Biden
Edwards - Warren?
Obama - Buttigieg

Those are the best parallels I can think of? Not perfect and obviously there isn't a Bernie. I feel like Richardson's number is a mixture of Klobuchar and Yang as a parallel.

[indietraveler]

Remember that you need 15% to be viable

Keep in mind the 15% threshold.

Remember though that this time they're actually going to release the raw count of initial preferences, before people reallocate their support on the 15% threshold.  I'm not sure how we know yet how the media is going to handle this. Will the initial preference vote be treated by the media as the "real" results?  Or will they put both sets of numbers up on the screen at once, or what?

I realize that the reallocated #s are the ones that determine delegate allocation, but Iowa's a small state with few delegates.  It matters so much only because of media framing / momentum reasons, so who the media crowns the "winner" matters more than delegates.

Agreed everything about Iowa is more about the media narrative than how the delegates shake out, but regardless whoever comes out on top will get all the hype unless we see someone really unexpected get a close second or third.

This is the first I'm hearing about what you described though. The media is somehow going to release all the first round results before any precinct moves on to their 2nd round of voting? Or once everything is done we'll get both numbers? If it's the former this sounds like a mess. If we end up getting both numbers after it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[Tintrlvr]

Incidentally, the NYT had a poll right around now in Iowa in 2008:

Clinton 25%
Edwards 23%
Obama 22%
Richardson 12%
Biden 4%
Kucinich 1%
Dodd 1%
Undecided 12%

(This was simultaneous with Richardson's national peak, thus his relatively strong showing.)

Clinton - Biden
Edwards - Warren?
Obama - Buttigieg

Those are the best parallels I can think of? Not perfect and obviously there isn't a Bernie. I feel like Richardson's number is a mixture of Klobuchar and Yang as a parallel.

Maybe. One characteristic of the Iowa 2008 polling even months before the caucuses was that Obama consistently did by far the best with potential caucus-goers who said they were absolutely certain to caucus or otherwise had the highest enthusiasm. I haven't seen enough to see for sure who that's true of this year; at a guess, I think each of Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg have the potential to overperform their polling based on enthusiasm. Biden would almost certainly underperform his polling in a caucus, though, which makes being in fourth in general polling even worse for him (but, beneficially for him, Iowa is really the only true caucus left, so if he can survive a disastrous showing there, there wouldn't be more opportunities to underperform his polling).

[IceSpear]

Biden can obviously win the nomination even without IA/NH, but finishing 3rd/4th in one or both of them would be absolutely humiliating. The coverage would be brutal.

[Mr. Morden]

This is the first I'm hearing about what you described though. The media is somehow going to release all the first round results before any precinct moves on to their 2nd round of voting? Or once everything is done we'll get both numbers? If it's the former this sounds like a mess. If we end up getting both numbers after it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

The fact that they'll be releasing the pre-reallocation raw vote count is mentioned in passing in the Wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Iowa_Democratic_caucuses

and also here:

https://iowademocrats.org/iowa-democratic-party-proposes-historic-changes-2020-iowa-caucuses/

The IDP plans to release the raw totals from the first alignment, final alignment and the state delegate equivalents earned by each presidential preference group. State delegate equivalents will be used to determine the allocation of national delegates.

We know that the raw initial vote count will be released on the night of the caucus, but I don't think there's been any clarity on the exact timing beyond that.  Will they just give us the numbers for that at the end of the night (after having been tracking the "state delegate equivalent" number up until that point)?  Will initial and final preferences dribble out slowly precinct by precinct at the same time?  I don't think we know the answer to that.

[indietraveler]

I don't see Sanders with any risk of dropping below 15%. If anything all polls don't consider the unlikely voter which Sanders is tapping to & under-estimate young voter turnout based on previous turnout levels. That coupled up with the energy of his supporters & huge volunteer & donor base means he will very likely exceed the polls. Just look @ the number of donors of Bernie. It is virtually impossible to fall below 15%.

Are these your thoughts or are they from another site? The 15% threshold is by precinct so in a tight 4 way race with so many options he could very well slip below 15% in many communities.

Of course a lot could change in the next few months, at this point I would put him 3rd at best regardless of his percentage.

Have there been any additional polls confirming that Sanders is virtually getting 0% of Clinton caucus supporters from 2016? That's also horrible for him.

[indietraveler]

This is the first I'm hearing about what you described though. The media is somehow going to release all the first round results before any precinct moves on to their 2nd round of voting? Or once everything is done we'll get both numbers? If it's the former this sounds like a mess. If we end up getting both numbers after it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

The fact that they'll be releasing the pre-reallocation raw vote count is mentioned in passing in the Wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Iowa_Democratic_caucuses

and also here:

https://iowademocrats.org/iowa-democratic-party-proposes-historic-changes-2020-iowa-caucuses/

The IDP plans to release the raw totals from the first alignment, final alignment and the state delegate equivalents earned by each presidential preference group. State delegate equivalents will be used to determine the allocation of national delegates.

We know that the raw initial vote count will be released on the night of the caucus, but I don't think there's been any clarity on the exact timing beyond that.  Will they just give us the numbers for that at the end of the night (after having been tracking the "state delegate equivalent" number up until that point)?  Will initial and final preferences dribble out slowly precinct by precinct at the same time?  I don't think we know the answer to that.

I would guess we'd get them at the same time as everything else. Of course with social media now I'm sure there will be tons of people documenting throughout the night so you'll probably get a small handful of results at some sites beforehand.

[Tintrlvr]

I don't see Sanders with any risk of dropping below 15%. If anything all polls don't consider the unlikely voter which Sanders is tapping to & under-estimate young voter turnout based on previous turnout levels. That coupled up with the energy of his supporters & huge volunteer & donor base means he will very likely exceed the polls. Just look @ the number of donors of Bernie. It is virtually impossible to fall below 15%.

Are these your thoughts or are they from another site? The 15% threshold is by precinct so in a tight 4 way race with so many options he could very well slip below 15% in many communities.

Of course a lot could change in the next few months, at this point I would put him 3rd at best regardless of his percentage.

Have there been any additional polls confirming that Sanders is virtually getting 0% of Clinton caucus supporters from 2016? That's also horrible for him.

Not just could, absolutely will. If this poll were the actual results, every candidate would be below 15% in some polling places, maybe even a lot of polling places.

Curious question: Is there any rule for what happens if no candidate reaches the 15% viability threshold at a particular caucus site? That wouldn't be impossible to happen somewhere with these figures. Top two continue viability? Top three? Just the leader takes all delegates? Delegates go unpledged?

[GP270watch]

 The combination of Warren/Sanders being the front runner in Iowa is what really is impressive. It shows where The Democratic Party is going.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Warren and Buttigieg are gonna place 1st and 2nd, hopefully,  until SC

[Crumpets]

There's an interesting glitch on RCP right now whereby, because Pete is in 2nd place for the first time, but Warren has not always been in first place, the graph of the polling margin thinks that Buttigieg was clear in the lead by five points back in May.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/ia/iowa_democratic_presidential_caucus-6731.html

[MR DARK BRANDON]

The media blocked out Yang again I see...

[Sir Mohamed]

Yes, Biden and Sanders are out. Biden is indeed a sloth and he will go down as the Jeb of 2020😏😏😏😏

Dude, you change your assessment each day, depending on the newest poll...