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jason1637 on 13 November 2019
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Jaicee said:
jason1637 said:
If Buttigieg wins the early states that could give the momentum to take it.

tsogud said:

Yeah that's very possible but at this point he's only crippling Biden and Warren. As these two coalitions overlap with his, especially Warren's. Buttigieg doesn't have that much broad appeal, being mostly successful with white wealthier voters. He's having the same problem Warren had earlier in the race, he needs to work on appealing to black and Latin voters. Iowa and New Hampshire have a 90%+ white population so that coupled with his aggressive campaigning and dumping loads of money into those two states I'm not surprised he's doing well.

I think the two of you are right about this much: Buttigieg is a candidate we should be talking about here at this point! Him surging to the leading position in Iowa is a development that merits our attention.

I will say though Tsogud that the above actually represents a somewhat dated view of Buttigieg's sources of support as far as I can tell. Check out pages 168 to 170 of the latest national survey here to see what I mean. While his supporters remain lopsidedly white people, most everything else has actually changed since the spring and summer, as you can see. Buttigieg's principal support has traditionally come from young, overwhelmingly very wealthy white men who voted for Hillary Clinton and described themselves as ideologically liberal. Since the last Democratic debate much of that has changed. Today, he appears to be supported most disproportionately by older white women who describe themselves as moderate, and he now has about an equal amount of support from Clinton voters and Trump voters. Also, he now enjoys the same volume of support among low-income voters as he does overall in this poll: 8% of voters making less than $50,000 a year, and 8% of voters overall. That last point is actually very rare. Poorer people are notoriously difficult to interest in politics and vote less often and commit to candidates less often than people from other income groups, and to which end are the most likely to say they're undecided in these surveys, so it's rare for any candidate to be just as popular among working class people as they are overall. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who consistently enjoys mostly working class support (which isn't to say that he's the most popular candidate among working class people (in this poll, for example, he ranks in third among low-income voters, much as he does overall), but it does say something).

People may recall that I was impressed by Mayor Pete's last debate performance, remarking specifically that he came across as less fake and more fully Midwestern than he had in the past; as someone who seemed to think and talk a lot like typical Midwestern blue collar workers think and talk. It looks like I wasn't alone in that sentiment to judge by this latest data out of Iowa and the evidence of where this new surge of support is coming from! The Mayor Pete I saw in that last debate isn't someone who would be either my first or second choice candidate, personally, but...maybe third choice! Definitely someone I could picture myself voting for easily in the general election; much more easily than before.

You're absolutely right though, Tsogud, his lack of support among black voters specifically (he's at a devastating 0% support among African Americans in linked poll!) is a major weakness for his campaign...if it persists! The thing is though that winning Iowa...well if that indeed happens for him, that would be a very big deal and a game-changer, realistically. The fact is that the Democrats usually do go on to nominate the candidate who wins the Iowa Caucus. Winning that particular contest seems to have an almost magical ability to get people who previously weren't interested to give your campaign another look. I mean I suspect personally he'd make inroads among voters of color broadly if he won the Iowa Caucus, though Joe Biden would likely remain the overall favorite of both black and Latino voters like he currently is and has been for most of this contest. But in a four-way contest with two progressives (Warren and Sanders) and two moderates (Biden and Buttigieg)...well I think that would just tend to lessen Biden's overall chances of victory in the end even in spite of his strong lead among black voters. I don't know who would win the nomination under those circumstances because that would be a truly extraordinary and chaotic situation.

Or he could just prove to be the latest flavor of the month and I'm way over-analyzing all this, who knows?

Last early state poll from MC

Latest one I posted earlier.

You could argue that Biden supporters are migrating towards Buttigieg and Sanders supporters are migrating towards Warren.