fivethirtyeight--2020-02-03--How Iowa’s Three Different Votes Could Affect Who ‘Wins’

If you ’ re an electoral politics junkie , you may have already read something about how Iowa could actually produce three different winners ( ! )
on Monday night .
What the heck does that actually mean ?
Let me explain — while also giving you some insight into how our forecast model handles these different versions of the vote count , and which candidates might benefit in one count versus another .
The Iowa caucuses work by voters entering a caucus site such as a high school gymnasium at 7 p.m. and physically forming preference groups — all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corner of the room , and all the Joe Biden supporters in another , for instance .
Voters may also join an uncommitted group .
This is called the first alignment of voter preferences — and for the first time this year , Iowa Democrats will count and record how voters are aligned at this stage of the process .
Thus , the first alignment is the first of the three ways that the caucus vote will be reported .
It ’ s the most straightforward metric of candidate support , and it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ caucuses come to the voting as it will take place in most other states , where voters get just one choice and there are none of the complicated rules that I ’ ll describe in a moment .
Iowa ’ s process doesn ’ t stop there , however .
Voters in candidate groups that fail to meet a viability threshold in the first alignment — typically 15 percent of the vote , but it can be higher in smaller precincts — have one of three choices : • They can try to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to achieve viability .
For example , if the Warren group initially has 14 percent of the vote , it ’ s not necessarily dead in the water .
Rather , it could recruit a few Tom Steyer voters , or a Michael Bennet supporter , etc.
, to get to 15 percent .
It can ’ t recruit voters from groups that already achieved viability , however .
Once a group is viable , it can continue to add new voters and grow larger , but it can ’ t lose them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home .
Nothing forces them to participate in further rounds of caucusing .
The vote count after this stage goes by several names , but I ’ ll call it the final alignment .
It ’ s the second of the three ways that Iowa will report its vote .
And it has a lot of things going for it .
Since only candidates who get at least 15 percent of the vote are eligible for delegates to the Democratic National Convention , it makes sense to give voters who initially choose a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent a chance to express a preference for a candidate who does .
And the realignment process is a highly traditional and distinctive part of the caucuses that the candidates plan around .
Incidentally , the final alignment is the version of the vote count that our model simulates .
When we say that Bernie Sanders ’ s projected share of the vote runs between 13 and 43 percent , that ’ s a projection of his final alignment vote .
But the model does make a few simplifications .
For instance , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somewhat computationally intensive , we calculate it for 80 hypothetical caucus sites of various sizes — 20 in each congressional district — rather than the full contingent of roughly 1,700 precincts that will caucus on Monday .
And to estimate how widely initial preferences might vary from precinct to precinct , we used the precinct-by-precinct vote from the Republican caucuses in 2016 as our guide .
Incidentally , you should expect there to be quite a bit of variation in the vote from precinct to precinct , especially given that most precincts are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 15 percent of the vote districtwide , she ’ ll have some precincts where she ’ s at 25 percent of the vote or more and others where she has very few votes .
There is not necessarily a bright line at 15 percent exactly .
In simulating the process , we assume that voters make decisions in order of the smallest nonviable group to the largest .
( Essentially , this is the equivalent of tabulating votes under ranked choice voting . )
If Bennet has 1 percent of the vote for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a particular precinct , his voters will be assigned to other candidates first .
The process continues until all groups either become viable or have their voters reassigned .
I ’ ve skipped over a rather important detail , however .
How does the model decide which voters realign to which groups ?
This is based on a combination of three factors : • Larger groups are assumed to be more capable of attracting new supporters , other things being equal .
• Whether the group was initially viable matters .
If a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it may be at risk of losing members to other groups at the same time it is trying to recruit its own new members .
So the model hedges its bets .
In some simulations , supporters of nonviable candidates may be willing to join with other nonviable candidates in an effort to achieve viability .
Other times , they ’ ll resist this .
• Finally , we use a proximity rating , which estimates how far apart the candidates are from one another along ideological and other dimensions .
For instance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somewhat more likely to go to Warren than the other major candidates and vice versa .
And Biden voters are assumed to be fairly close to Amy Klobuchar voters and to be more likely to prefer one another as a second choice .
None of this ideal — there ’ s a lot of guesswork involved .
Second choices for unconventional candidates such as Andrew Yang aren ’ t easy to capture under this method , for instance .
( All of the data that Iowa publishes this year should hopefully make things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our method does a pretty good job of replicating polls that show voters ’ second choices .
Note that our assumptions aren ’ t terribly aggressive , either .
For instance , if a group of Warren voters is trying to decide between Sanders and Biden , the model would have them going about 3:2 to Sanders , but not in a more lopsided ratio than that .
As you can probably infer from the above , this yields some fairly complicated patterns as far as second choices go : • Sanders isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any of the moderates ( Biden , Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg ) .
But he is a good second choice for Warren voters , and Warren may be under 15 percent in many precincts .
• Biden ’ s case is somewhat parallel to Sanders ’ s , except with Klobuchar serving in the role of Warren .
If Klobuchar stays under 15 percent in most precincts , Biden is an obvious second choice for her voters .
But a Klobuchar surge could hurt him .
• Buttigieg tends to pick up a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and in our model , and to draw it from a fairly wide-ranging group of candidates .
This is because he ’ s sort of in the middle of the spectrum : more progressive than Biden and arguably Klobuchar , but less so than Warren and Sanders .
• Warren often polls well as a second choice .
However , much of her second-choice support comes from Sanders supporters , and Sanders figures to be above 15 percent in most precincts .
So while there ’ s an upside case for Warren if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surge has hurt her .
Still , she is also a somewhat logical landing spot for Klobuchar and Buttigieg supporters as all three candidates overperform among college-educated voters .
• Klobuchar , like Buttigieg , could theoretically be a logical second choice for supporters of several other candidates .
However , she ’ ll need to beat her polls to do so , as her current position in our Iowa polling average ( 10 percent ) will have her under the viability threshold in many precincts .
Acknowledging that our model has to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voter behavior , let ’ s look at some of its predictions .
First , here ’ s a comparison between the first alignment and the final alignment for each candidate , averaged across 10,000 simulations from a model run late Sunday night : As you can see , the topline effects of realignment are fairly simple .
Candidates comfortably above 15 percent tend to gain votes and see their leads grow — for instance , Sanders ’ s share of the vote grows from 23.6 percent ( first alignment ) to 28.1 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ projections .
Candidates near 15 percent tend to tread water .
And candidates well under 15 percent can lose the large majority of their vote , perhaps almost all of it , to other candidates .
With that said , these topline effects conceal a range of possible outcomes .
For a taste of this , here is a chart showing how Buttigieg ’ s final alignment is projected to turn out given various levels of first alignment vote : If Buttgiieg ’ s first alignment vote is in the single digits or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hurt him .
But if he gets around 20 percent of the vote in the first alignment , he ’ s projected to wind up with an average of somewhere around 24 or 25 percent of the vote in the final alignment .
That ’ s actually a fairly big gain .
It ’ s slightly better than Sanders , for instance , who would be projected to get closer to 23 percent of the final alignment vote with 20 percent of the first alignment vote : Granted , these are not exactly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with 24 or 25 percent .
But an extra percentage point or two added or lost as the result of the realignment process could make the difference in a race where the top four candidates remain fairly closely bunched together .
Moreover , our model ’ s assumptions about who might be helped or hurt by realignment may be too conservative .
Having well-trained precinct captains can help a candidate in the realignment process a lot , and there ’ s also the possibility of strategic alliances between the candidates .
Klobuchar and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to try to send their caucusgoers toward one another in precincts where they hadn ’ t achieved viability .
The one thing you probably don ’ t want to do is enter into an alliance with one of the front-runners .
This isn ’ t the final stage , though .
Instead , the final alignment is translated into something called state delegate equivalents , which is the third way that Iowa counts its vote .
Until this year , in fact , this was the only way that Iowa counted its vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process where the caucuses technically served to elect delegates to county conventions , which in turn elected delegates to district conventions and the state convention , which in turn elected delegates to the Democratic National Convention .
This process is no longer used — delegates to the DNC will be elected based on caucus night results .
However , state delegate equivalents are still used to determine essentially how much weight each precinct gets in determining DNC delegates .
The catch is that these weights are based on the number of votes that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2016 and that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Fred Hubbell got in the 2018 general election .
And this can create some distortions .
General election turnout is much higher than caucus turnout ; 630,000 Iowans voted for Hubbell in 2018 and 650,000 did for Clinton in the general election in 2016 .
By comparison , 172,000 Democrats participated in the 2016 caucuses .
Additionally , a higher share of caucus turnout tends to come from more liberal , upscale , urban and suburban counties and/or counties with colleges and universities , and proportionately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Essentially , then , rural votes are likely to give candidates more bang for the buck in terms of state delegate equivalents .
Candidates whose voters are mostly concentrated in liberal , highly populous counties are liable to underperform , conversely .
There are various estimates out there as to who this is liable to help or hurt .
But my read on the evidence is that Warren and to a lesser extent Sanders are likely to be hurt by it .
Warren ’ s vote is mostly concentrated in upscale suburbs , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surges in counties with a lot of young voters .
Conversely , Klobuchar and Buttigieg have put a lot of emphasis on covering Iowa ’ s entire map and could benefit from this process .
So could Biden , whose voters should be older , more working-class and more rural .
To repeat , none of this is reflected in our model , which stops at the final alignment stage .
But despite being somewhat convoluted — and do Democrats really want to give more weight to rural areas given the party ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. Senate and the Electoral College ?
— state delegate equivalents are likely to get a fair amount of attention on election night .
It ’ s the metric that the various networks and news agencies are used to using to declare winners .
And it is technically the measure that is used to determine delegates to the Democratic National Convention , although the importance of Iowa comes from the momentum it produces rather than the number of delegates it has .
As you can probably infer , we personally don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a superior measure to the other two .
So we intend to refer to all three metrics fairly often in our coverage of the caucuses on Monday night .
We can ’ t control what the rest of the media does , though , and the media will probably still lean into state delegate equivalents fairly heavily .
Knowing how the media covers the race is important to being able to project the bounce that Iowa may be expected to produce for candidates who perform well there .
So in predicting the bounce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ model will essentially make a compromise .
Bounces are projected based both on the share of the vote each candidate gets , and a binary variable indicating whether he or she won the state .
For the vote share part of the calculation in Iowa , the model will use state delegate equivalents .
But the winner bonus will be split , if necessary , between the three different measures , reflecting the fact that different candidates may have reasonable competing claims to victory .
In any event , a disputed or ambiguous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bounces that candidates get out of Iowa , especially given that the media ’ s attention span may be limited by the State of the Union on Tuesday and the conclusion to President Trump ’ s impeachment trial later this week .
So every candidate ’ s goal in Iowa should be not just to win , but to win clearly enough that they sweep all three metrics .

If you’re an electoral politics junkie, you may have already read something about how Iowa could actually produce three different winners (!) on Monday night. What the heck does that actually mean? Let me explain — while also giving you some insight into how our forecast model handles these different versions of the vote count, and which candidates might benefit in one count versus another.
[Our Latest Forecast: Who will win the Iowa caucuses?]
The Iowa caucuses work by voters entering a caucus site such as a high school gymnasium at 7 p.m. and physically forming preference groups — all the Elizabeth Warren supporters stand in one corner of the room, and all the Joe Biden supporters in another, for instance. Voters may also join an uncommitted group.
This is called the first alignment of voter preferences — and for the first time this year, Iowa Democrats will count and record how voters are aligned at this stage of the process. Thus, the first alignment is the first of the three ways that the caucus vote will be reported. It’s the most straightforward metric of candidate support, and it’s the closest that the Iowa caucuses come to the voting as it will take place in most other states, where voters get just one choice and there are none of the complicated rules that I’ll describe in a moment.
Iowa’s process doesn’t stop there, however. Voters in candidate groups that fail to meet a viability threshold in the first alignment — typically 15 percent of the vote, but it can be higher in smaller precincts — have one of three choices:
They can join a viable group.
They can try to combine with voters in other nonviable groups to achieve viability. For example, if the Warren group initially has 14 percent of the vote, it’s not necessarily dead in the water. Rather, it could recruit a few Tom Steyer voters, or a Michael Bennet supporter, etc., to get to 15 percent. It can’t recruit voters from groups that already achieved viability, however. Once a group is viable, it can continue to add new voters and grow larger, but it can’t lose them.
Or they could just go home. Nothing forces them to participate in further rounds of caucusing.
The vote count after this stage goes by several names, but I’ll call it the final alignment. It’s the second of the three ways that Iowa will report its vote. And it has a lot of things going for it. Since only candidates who get at least 15 percent of the vote are eligible for delegates to the Democratic National Convention, it makes sense to give voters who initially choose a candidate who can’t get 15 percent a chance to express a preference for a candidate who does. And the realignment process is a highly traditional and distinctive part of the caucuses that the candidates plan around.
‘Don’t reduce (Iowa caucuses) to a 2-way race yet’: Nate Silver
Incidentally, the final alignment is the version of the vote count that our model simulates. When we say that Bernie Sanders’s projected share of the vote runs between 13 and 43 percent, that’s a projection of his final alignment vote.
But the model does make a few simplifications. For instance, because the process of simulating realignment is somewhat computationally intensive, we calculate it for 80 hypothetical caucus sites of various sizes — 20 in each congressional district — rather than the full contingent of roughly 1,700 precincts that will caucus on Monday. And to estimate how widely initial preferences might vary from precinct to precinct, we used the precinct-by-precinct vote from the Republican caucuses in 2016 as our guide. Incidentally, you should expect there to be quite a bit of variation in the vote from precinct to precinct, especially given that most precincts are fairly small. If Warren is at 15 percent of the vote districtwide, she’ll have some precincts where she’s at 25 percent of the vote or more and others where she has very few votes. There is not necessarily a bright line at 15 percent exactly.
In simulating the process, we assume that voters make decisions in order of the smallest nonviable group to the largest. (Essentially, this is the equivalent of tabulating votes under ranked choice voting.) If Bennet has 1 percent of the vote for example and is the smallest group in a particular precinct, his voters will be assigned to other candidates first. The process continues until all groups either become viable or have their voters reassigned.
I’ve skipped over a rather important detail, however. How does the model decide which voters realign to which groups? This is based on a combination of three factors:
Larger groups are assumed to be more capable of attracting new supporters, other things being equal.
Whether the group was initially viable matters. If a group was not viable at first, it may be at risk of losing members to other groups at the same time it is trying to recruit its own new members. So the model hedges its bets. In some simulations, supporters of nonviable candidates may be willing to join with other nonviable candidates in an effort to achieve viability. Other times, they’ll resist this.
Finally, we use a proximity rating, which estimates how far apart the candidates are from one another along ideological and other dimensions. For instance, Sanders supporters are assumed to be somewhat more likely to go to Warren than the other major candidates and vice versa. And Biden voters are assumed to be fairly close to Amy Klobuchar voters and to be more likely to prefer one another as a second choice.
None of this is ideal — there’s a lot of guesswork involved. Second choices for unconventional candidates such as Andrew Yang aren’t easy to capture under this method, for instance. (All of the data that Iowa publishes this year should hopefully make things easier in 2024.) Nonetheless, our method does a pretty good job of replicating polls that show voters’ second choices. Note that our assumptions aren’t terribly aggressive, either. For instance, if a group of Warren voters is trying to decide between Sanders and Biden, the model would have them going about 3:2 to Sanders, but not in a more lopsided ratio than that.
As you can probably infer from the above, this yields some fairly complicated patterns as far as second choices go:
Sanders isn’t a natural second choice for any of the moderates (Biden, Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg). But he is a good second choice for Warren voters, and Warren may be under 15 percent in many precincts.
Biden’s case is somewhat parallel to Sanders’s, except with Klobuchar serving in the role of Warren. If Klobuchar stays under 15 percent in most precincts, Biden is an obvious second choice for her voters. But a Klobuchar surge could hurt him.
Buttigieg tends to pick up a lot of second-choice support both in polls and in our model, and to draw it from a fairly wide-ranging group of candidates. This is because he’s sort of in the middle of the spectrum: more progressive than Biden and arguably Klobuchar, but less so than Warren and Sanders.
Warren often polls well as a second choice. However, much of her second-choice support comes from Sanders supporters, and Sanders figures to be above 15 percent in most precincts. So while there’s an upside case for Warren if Sanders underperforms his polls, his recent surge has hurt her. Still, she is also a somewhat logical landing spot for Klobuchar and Buttigieg supporters as all three candidates overperform among college-educated voters.
Klobuchar, like Buttigieg, could theoretically be a logical second choice for supporters of several other candidates. However, she’ll need to beat her polls to do so, as her current position in our Iowa polling average (10 percent) will have her under the viability threshold in many precincts.
Acknowledging that our model has to make a lot of educated guesses about voter behavior, let’s look at some of its predictions. First, here’s a comparison between the first alignment and the final alignment for each candidate, averaged across 10,000 simulations from a model run late Sunday night:
How Iowa’s votes could change from one stage to the next Average FiveThirtyEight model Iowa caucus first alignment and final alignment projections, as of Feb. 2, 2020 Candidate First Alignment Final Alignment Change Sanders 23.6% 28.1% +4.5 Biden 22.5 26.4 +3.9 Buttigieg 16.5 17.9 +1.4 Warren 15.7 15.9 +0.2 Klobuchar 10.8 8.8 -2.0 Yang 4.0 1.4 -2.6 Steyer 3.8 1.3 -2.5 Bloomberg 1.3 0.1 -1.2 Gabbard 1.2 0.0 -1.2 Bennet 0.5 0.0 -0.5 Patrick 0.2 0.0 -0.2
As you can see, the topline effects of realignment are fairly simple. Candidates comfortably above 15 percent tend to gain votes and see their leads grow — for instance, Sanders’s share of the vote grows from 23.6 percent (first alignment) to 28.1 percent (final alignment) in our projections. Candidates near 15 percent tend to tread water. And candidates well under 15 percent can lose the large majority of their vote, perhaps almost all of it, to other candidates.
With that said, these topline effects conceal a range of possible outcomes. For a taste of this, here is a chart showing how Buttigieg’s final alignment is projected to turn out given various levels of first alignment vote:
If Buttgiieg’s first alignment vote is in the single digits or the low teens, then realignment will hurt him. But if he gets around 20 percent of the vote in the first alignment, he’s projected to wind up with an average of somewhere around 24 or 25 percent of the vote in the final alignment. That’s actually a fairly big gain. It’s slightly better than Sanders, for instance, who would be projected to get closer to 23 percent of the final alignment vote with 20 percent of the first alignment vote:
Granted, these are not exactly huge differences — 23 percent as compared with 24 or 25 percent. But an extra percentage point or two added or lost as the result of the realignment process could make the difference in a race where the top four candidates remain fairly closely bunched together. Moreover, our model’s assumptions about who might be helped or hurt by realignment may be too conservative. Having well-trained precinct captains can help a candidate in the realignment process a lot, and there’s also the possibility of strategic alliances between the candidates. Klobuchar and Buttigieg, for example, could agree to try to send their caucusgoers toward one another in precincts where they hadn’t achieved viability. The one thing you probably don’t want to do is enter into an alliance with one of the front-runners.
This isn’t the final stage, though. Instead, the final alignment is translated into something called state delegate equivalents, which is the third way that Iowa counts its vote. Until this year, in fact, this was the only way that Iowa counted its vote. It comes from a now archaic process where the caucuses technically served to elect delegates to county conventions, which in turn elected delegates to district conventions and the state convention, which in turn elected delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
This process is no longer used — delegates to the DNC will be elected based on caucus night results. However, state delegate equivalents are still used to determine essentially how much weight each precinct gets in determining DNC delegates.
The catch is that these weights are based on the number of votes that Hillary Clinton got in the general election in 2016 and that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Fred Hubbell got in the 2018 general election. And this can create some distortions. General election turnout is much higher than caucus turnout; 630,000 Iowans voted for Hubbell in 2018 and 650,000 did for Clinton in the general election in 2016. By comparison, 172,000 Democrats participated in the 2016 caucuses. Additionally, a higher share of caucus turnout tends to come from more liberal, upscale, urban and suburban counties and/or counties with colleges and universities, and proportionately less of it from rural counties.
Essentially, then, rural votes are likely to give candidates more bang for the buck in terms of state delegate equivalents. Candidates whose voters are mostly concentrated in liberal, highly populous counties are liable to underperform, conversely. There are various estimates out there as to who this is liable to help or hurt. But my read on the evidence is that Warren and to a lesser extent Sanders are likely to be hurt by it. Warren’s vote is mostly concentrated in upscale suburbs, and Sanders is hoping for big turnout surges in counties with a lot of young voters. Conversely, Klobuchar and Buttigieg have put a lot of emphasis on covering Iowa’s entire map and could benefit from this process. So could Biden, whose voters should be older, more working-class and more rural. To repeat, none of this is reflected in our model, which stops at the final alignment stage.
But despite being somewhat convoluted — and do Democrats really want to give more weight to rural areas given the party’s complaints about the non-representativeness of the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College? — state delegate equivalents are likely to get a fair amount of attention on election night. It’s the metric that the various networks and news agencies are used to using to declare winners. And it is technically the measure that is used to determine delegates to the Democratic National Convention, although the importance of Iowa comes from the momentum it produces rather than the number of delegates it has.
As you can probably infer, we personally don’t buy that state delegate equivalents is necessarily a superior measure to the other two. So we intend to refer to all three metrics fairly often in our coverage of the caucuses on Monday night.
We can’t control what the rest of the media does, though, and the media will probably still lean into state delegate equivalents fairly heavily. Knowing how the media covers the race is important to being able to project the bounce that Iowa may be expected to produce for candidates who perform well there.
So in predicting the bounce that each candidate will receive, our model will essentially make a compromise. Bounces are projected based both on the share of the vote each candidate gets, and a binary variable indicating whether he or she won the state. For the vote share part of the calculation in Iowa, the model will use state delegate equivalents. But the winner bonus will be split, if necessary, between the three different measures, reflecting the fact that different candidates may have reasonable competing claims to victory.
[Our Latest Forecast: Who Will Win The 2020 Democratic Primary?]
In any event, a disputed or ambiguous outcome in Iowa is likely to dampen the bounces that candidates get out of Iowa, especially given that the media’s attention span may be limited by the State of the Union on Tuesday and the conclusion to President Trump’s impeachment trial later this week. So every candidate’s goal in Iowa should be not just to win, but to win clearly enough that they sweep all three metrics.


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-03--Breaking Down Our Iowa Forecast, District By District

Tonight ’ s Iowa caucuses kick off a multi-step process that will eventually send 41 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention .
But did you know that only 14 of them are assigned to candidates based on their statewide results in Iowa ?
The remaining 27 are based on the results in each of the Hawkeye State ’ s four congressional districts .
In fact , about two-thirds of all pledged delegates nationwide aren ’ t assigned at the state level , which is why our primary forecast also estimates delegates at the congressional-district level in most states .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ makeup of each district relative to its state — so in other words , as editor-in-chief Nate Silver wrote in our forecast methodology , just like we can forecast a candidate ’ s relative strength in one state vs. another , we can also forecast which districts are likely to be relatively strong ( or weak ) for a candidate .
( That said , due to the large amount of uncertainty inherent in this type of probabilistic forecast , these estimates aren ’ t terribly precise . )
And in Iowa specifically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ variation in the district-level results .
That ’ s because all four districts are politically and demographically pretty similar , both to one another and the state as a whole .
So just as former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders are roughly tied for first place statewide , our model thinks they are vying for the pledged-delegate lead in each congressional district as well .
Likewise , our forecast thinks former South Bend , Indiana , Mayor Pete Buttigieg , Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar will garner fewer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Sanders .
Still , it ’ s possible that there will be some variation in the results from one district to another — and understanding Iowa ’ s political geography will be important if you plan to follow the results with us tonight in real time .
So let ’ s make like Chuck Grassley and take a full tour of the state .
In northeastern Iowa , the 1st District contains the cities of Cedar Rapids , Waterloo and Dubuque , plus several rural counties .
With a population that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the least diverse district in Iowa , though the differences are pretty small ( the most diverse district in Iowa , the 3rd , for instance , is 84 percent white ) .
And in the 2016 Democratic caucuses , Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fought to a near-draw here , just like they did statewide .
Our model expects Sanders to receive an average of 2.3 delegates , Biden to receive 2.1 , Buttigieg 1.2 and Warren 1.0 .
But it ’ s Biden who seems to be putting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the state .
According to the Des Moines Register ’ s tally of candidate appearances , since Sept. 1 , he has held the highest share of his campaign events in the 1st District .
This makes sense , too , given Dubuque ’ s history as a center of industry and Waterloo ’ s large ( for Iowa ) African-American population .
The 2nd District covers southeastern Iowa , whose many manufacturing cities along the Mississippi River have struggled to recover since the Great Recession .
Candidates venture to cities like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ levels of educational attainment and median incomes lower than the state average , to talk about the plight of the working class .
To take one extreme example , Andrew Yang , who emphasizes the impact that job automation is having on the American workforce , has held 43 campaign events in the 2nd District , more than any of the top five candidates have held in any Iowa district .
At the same time , Iowa City is home to the 32,000+ students at the University of Iowa .
These two factors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 2nd District Sanders ’ s best district in Iowa in 2016 , although it was still close ( Sanders beat Clinton by about 5 points ) .
Our forecast currently predicts Sanders will win 2.3 delegates , on average ; Biden 2.2 ; Buttigieg 1.2 ; and Warren 1.0 .
Anchored by metro Des Moines , the southwestern 3rd District is the least white , most college-educated and most affluent district in Iowa — but again , not by much , as the presence of several rural counties brings the district ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with those of the state .
Accordingly , we are forecasting its delegates to break down similarly to the statewide delegates : an average of 2.6 for Sanders , 2.3 for Biden , 1.5 for Buttigieg and 1.2 for Warren .
( Everyone ’ s forecasted delegate hauls are bigger in the 3rd because the district sends eight delegates to the DNC , the most of any district in Iowa . )
But different parts of the district might vote very differently .
Polk County ( home of Des Moines proper ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counties , are wealthier and more college-educated than the state average .
Given their bases of college-educated white voters , Buttigieg and Warren could do well in these counties .
However , Polk is also 23 percent nonwhite , providing an opening for Biden in the state ’ s most delegate-rich county .
If the 2016 results are any indication , the Democratic electorate in the 3rd District is also Iowa ’ s least progressive ; Clinton beat Sanders by about 7 points here , making it her best district .
Klobuchar may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : She has held 38 events in the district since Sept. 1 , more than any other candidate .
Finally , the 4th District encompasses the rural northwestern corner of Iowa , including a sizable evangelical population .
Unsurprisingly , it is solidly Republican in general elections , which also means it is worth the fewest Democratic delegates ( five ) of any Iowa district .
Take out those Republicans , though , and you ’ re left with a Democratic electorate very similar to the rest of the state .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent in the 4th District while Sanders earned 49.6 percent — almost identical to their statewide performances .
Our forecast expects the 4th District to see another close contest between the establishment and progressive wings of the party : In the model , Sanders and Biden each receives 1.6 delegates on average , Buttigieg 0.8 and Warren 0.7 .
Buttigieg in particular has spent a lot of time here : The 31 campaign events he ’ s held in the 4th District since Sept. 1 are more than he has held in any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them being worth more delegates… ) .
By contrast , Warren has been a relative stranger in the 4th District , holding just two events here in the past five months .
Despite the demographic similarities of Iowa ’ s congressional districts , we might still see some candidates distinguish themselves in certain areas — and those differences could matter for the delegate math .
Tune into our live blog tonight , where we ’ ll be tracking the results district by district as well as overall .

Tonight’s Iowa caucuses kick off a multi-step process that will eventually send 41 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention. But did you know that only 14 of them are assigned to candidates based on their statewide results in Iowa? The remaining 27 are based on the results in each of the Hawkeye State’s four congressional districts.
[Our Latest Forecast: Who will win the Iowa caucuses?]
In fact, about two-thirds of all pledged delegates nationwide aren’t assigned at the state level, which is why our primary forecast also estimates delegates at the congressional-district level in most states. These estimates are based on the demographic makeup of each district relative to its state — so in other words, as editor-in-chief Nate Silver wrote in our forecast methodology, just like we can forecast a candidate’s relative strength in one state vs. another, we can also forecast which districts are likely to be relatively strong (or weak) for a candidate. (That said, due to the large amount of uncertainty inherent in this type of probabilistic forecast, these estimates aren’t terribly precise.)
And in Iowa specifically, we don’t anticipate huge variation in the district-level results. That’s because all four districts are politically and demographically pretty similar, both to one another and the state as a whole. So just as former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders are roughly tied for first place statewide, our model thinks they are vying for the pledged-delegate lead in each congressional district as well. Likewise, our forecast thinks former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar will garner fewer delegates on the district level than Biden and Sanders.
Still, it’s possible that there will be some variation in the results from one district to another — and understanding Iowa’s political geography will be important if you plan to follow the results with us tonight in real time. So let’s make like Chuck Grassley and take a full tour of the state.
In northeastern Iowa, the 1st District contains the cities of Cedar Rapids, Waterloo and Dubuque, plus several rural counties. With a population that is 89 percent non-Hispanic white, it is the least diverse district in Iowa, though the differences are pretty small (the most diverse district in Iowa, the 3rd, for instance, is 84 percent white). And in the 2016 Democratic caucuses, Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fought to a near-draw here, just like they did statewide.
Our model expects Sanders to receive an average of 2.3 delegates, Biden to receive 2.1, Buttigieg 1.2 and Warren 1.0. But it’s Biden who seems to be putting a lot of effort into this part of the state. According to the Des Moines Register’s tally of candidate appearances, since Sept. 1, he has held the highest share of his campaign events in the 1st District. This makes sense, too, given Dubuque’s history as a center of industry and Waterloo’s large (for Iowa) African-American population.
The 2nd District covers southeastern Iowa, whose many manufacturing cities along the Mississippi River have struggled to recover since the Great Recession. Candidates venture to cities like Davenport and Clinton, which both have levels of educational attainment and median incomes lower than the state average, to talk about the plight of the working class. To take one extreme example, Andrew Yang, who emphasizes the impact that job automation is having on the American workforce, has held 43 campaign events in the 2nd District, more than any of the top five candidates have held in any Iowa district.
At the same time, Iowa City is home to the 32,000+ students at the University of Iowa. These two factors probably played a big role in making the 2nd District Sanders’s best district in Iowa in 2016, although it was still close (Sanders beat Clinton by about 5 points). Our forecast currently predicts Sanders will win 2.3 delegates, on average; Biden 2.2; Buttigieg 1.2; and Warren 1.0.
Anchored by metro Des Moines, the southwestern 3rd District is the least white, most college-educated and most affluent district in Iowa — but again, not by much, as the presence of several rural counties brings the district’s overall demographics more closely in line with those of the state. Accordingly, we are forecasting its delegates to break down similarly to the statewide delegates: an average of 2.6 for Sanders, 2.3 for Biden, 1.5 for Buttigieg and 1.2 for Warren. (Everyone’s forecasted delegate hauls are bigger in the 3rd because the district sends eight delegates to the DNC, the most of any district in Iowa.)
But different parts of the district might vote very differently. Polk County (home of Des Moines proper), as well as exurban Dallas and Warren counties, are wealthier and more college-educated than the state average. Given their bases of college-educated white voters, Buttigieg and Warren could do well in these counties. However, Polk is also 23 percent nonwhite, providing an opening for Biden in the state’s most delegate-rich county.
If the 2016 results are any indication, the Democratic electorate in the 3rd District is also Iowa’s least progressive; Clinton beat Sanders by about 7 points here, making it her best district. Klobuchar may be well positioned to benefit from that: She has held 38 events in the district since Sept. 1, more than any other candidate.
Finally, the 4th District encompasses the rural northwestern corner of Iowa, including a sizable evangelical population. Unsurprisingly, it is solidly Republican in general elections, which also means it is worth the fewest Democratic delegates (five) of any Iowa district. Take out those Republicans, though, and you’re left with a Democratic electorate very similar to the rest of the state. In the 2016 caucuses, Clinton received approximately 49.7 percent in the 4th District while Sanders earned 49.6 percent — almost identical to their statewide performances.
[Our Latest Forecast: Who Will Win The 2020 Democratic Primary?]
Our forecast expects the 4th District to see another close contest between the establishment and progressive wings of the party: In the model, Sanders and Biden each receives 1.6 delegates on average, Buttigieg 0.8 and Warren 0.7. Buttigieg in particular has spent a lot of time here: The 31 campaign events he’s held in the 4th District since Sept. 1 are more than he has held in any of the other three districts (despite them being worth more delegates…). By contrast, Warren has been a relative stranger in the 4th District, holding just two events here in the past five months.
Despite the demographic similarities of Iowa’s congressional districts, we might still see some candidates distinguish themselves in certain areas — and those differences could matter for the delegate math. Tune into our live blog tonight, where we’ll be tracking the results district by district as well as overall.
Samantha Sergi contributed research.
‘Don’t reduce (Iowa caucuses) to a 2-way race yet’: Nate Silver


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-02--What Are The X-Factors That Could Change The Results In Iowa?

Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight ’ s weekly politics chat .
The transcript below has been lightly edited .
sarahf ( Sarah Frostenson , politics editor ) : Our last politics chat before the 2020 Democratic primary kicks off !
!
And we ’ re talking Election X factors !
Or what things we should be looking at , besides the polls ( and our forecast ) , that could affect who wins on Monday ?
geoffrey.skelley ( Geoffrey Skelley , elections analyst ) : To me , in a race that is so close , the number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either ahead or falling short of the viability threshold – 15 percent at most caucus sites — seems like it could be really important for what happens on Monday .
Because say , someone like Bernie Sanders , if his support is concentrated in more urban areas or college towns , does that mean someone like Joe Biden could get more delegate support because he has backing across more rural areas ?
I don ’ t know .
nrakich ( Nathaniel Rakich , elections analyst ) : Yeah , and related to that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ initial preferences .
But caucusgoers are allowed to realign if their candidate doesn ’ t meet the viability threshold , and then , of course , the delegates awarded are based on that post-realignment total .
In other words , the polls can ’ t really tell us exactly how votes will translate into delegates .
So it will matter whose support is distributed the most efficiently .
sarahf : ( Quick side note : For the first time , raw vote tallies from the first and second alignments will be released @ @ @ @ @ @ @ delegate equivalents that a candidate earns .
In the past , the party only reported the delegate tallies . )
ameliatd ( Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux , senior writer ) : Well , and an interesting question along those lines , Geoffrey , is how much will turnout shape the final narrative ?
In the past , when raw vote totals weren ’ t released , candidates like Sanders didn ’ t have as much of an incentive to run up their numbers in places like college towns where they have lots of densely concentrated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be different , and it could make for some confusion when the delegate counts and the raw votes are in .
I ’ m also curious to see what kind of horse-trading will go on in the caucuses themselves !
geoffrey.skelley : Definitely true , Amelia .
I ’ m looking forward to the possibility of a scenario where Sanders wins the post-realignment raw vote total , but Biden wins the delegate count .
ameliatd : That ’ s one of the things that makes caucuses so fascinating and unpredictable — people are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ join their side as it ’ s happening .
sarahf : And you ’ ll be there to see it in action , Amelia !
That ought to be wild .
ameliatd : Yes !
I will be on the ground at a precinct in Iowa City , which I think will be one of the hubs for a potential Warren/Sanders showdown .
My Monday night is going to be full of drama .
sarahf : But play out that scenario you just mentioned , a little bit more , Geoff .
How @ @ @ @ @ @ @ votes , but Biden wins more delegates ( and therefore Iowa ) ?
geoffrey.skelley : Basically , every precinct is worth a certain number of state delegate equivalents , which is used to determine delegate allocation for national delegates .
So if you get particularly high turnout at a precinct near , say , the University of Iowa in Iowa City , Johnson County , that precinct ’ s value for delegate purposes is already set based on a calculation determined by the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial Democratic vote share in that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 500 of 600 voters there , it might have the same delegate value as Biden dominating in a different precinct with 150 voters if they are worth the same number of state delegate equivalents .
In the 2016 caucuses , for instance , Hillary Clinton swept all 1.6 SDEs in a Waterloo , Iowa , precinct that had 141 people show up , while Sanders got 1.6 of 1.8 SDEs in an Iowa City precinct that had 646 participants .
We can ’ t know what the “ popular vote ” was in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s available for the first time this year — but the delegate value for the two candidates was pretty much the same , even though one precinct had far higher turnout .
nrakich : I ’ m curious — which of those measures will you guys be paying the most attention to ?
sarahf : I mean … I find the whole “ both sides could claim victory on caucus night ” a bit disingenuous , or at the very least , there should be a heavy burden on the media to report @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t claim victory from the pre-alignment vote total !
!
That ’ s not how caucuses work .
( Now you can have quibbles with why Iowa caucuses in the first place sure , but this whole sowing confusion narrative bothers me .
Let ’ s not sow confusion ! )
That ’ s how almost every other state does it , i.e.
, primary states .
It is the most small-d democratic .
sarahf : That ’ s true , but Iowa isn ’ t a primary state !
And maybe caucuses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outline ( it is really time consuming to caucus ) , but it ’ s not like how the winner in Iowa is determined has changed .
It ’ s still based on the number of state delegate equivalents a candidate wins , we ’ ll just get to see more inside the process , which as a journalist , I ’ m 100 percent in favor of .
More data always , please .
But that means as journalists we have a responsibility to talk about the three different vote totals in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a caucus , e.g .
don ’ t read too much into the pre-alignment vote , because this will change ( not every candidate will have enough support to make it to the next round of voting ) .
That vote is the most small-d democratic , as you say , but it ’ s also not how caucuses work , so we shouldn ’ t feed into that narrative !
Although , I ’ m sure some candidates will .
But whatever .
Report the process ; don ’ t sow confusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why the initial preference numbers are the most important is that they ’ re the best representation of how voters feel — kind of like a massive poll .
The state delegate equivalents might matter more for delegate selection , but Iowa is a small state — the number of delegates a candidate gets there is less important than the momentum/vote of confidence he/she receives .
geoffrey.skelley : Right , Nathaniel — in fact , AAPOR ( the American Association for Public Opinion Research ) recommends that journalists compare poll results from this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the accuracy of polls .
clare.malone ( Clare Malone , senior political writer ) : Here ’ s a pulled-out question , not related to thresholds : Is there anything that could happen in this last weekend to sway things one way or the other for voters still on the bubble ?
Is it good for the Democrats that all these senators aren ’ t going to be in the Senate for a drawn-out impeachment trial after all ?
ameliatd : I have to imagine , Clare , that the senators are pretty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Iowa .
They ’ ve had surrogates campaigning on their behalf , but having the actual candidate there seems like a much better recipe for firing up their supporters — and that enthusiasm can really matter in the caucuses .
clare.malone : Another x-factor to mention : Could some big-name establishment Democrat speak out against Sanders ?
That sort of stuff has been floating around the past couple of weeks in news stories .
It ’ s the kind of thing you could see happening on a Sunday show or a cable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I mean , that ’ s a great question .
In theory , Iowa always has at least a few polling surprises , but it ’ s also kind of hard for me to see Buttigieg , Warren or Amy Klobuchar making a big comeback at this point .
I know , never say never .
But it ’ s hard for me to see this path — don ’ t @ me !
!
Someone from the Democratic establishment speaking out against Sanders , on the other hand … that could be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to not have the spokesperson be Hillary Clinton .
I feel like that Hollywood Reporter story about that new documentary where she dished on Sanders , and what it was like working with him in Congress , just fired up his base more than it actually hurt him .
nrakich : I don ’ t know if any figure in the party is big enough to matter , unless their last name is Obama .
And I don ’ t think either of the Obamas is going to weigh in at this point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few states and he becomes the favorite to win the nomination … geoffrey.skelley : Which could definitely happen — if he wins Iowa , he ’ ll be favored in New Hampshire and probably Nevada , too .
ameliatd : It would make sense to me if it were that the big establishment figures were biding their time to see how Sanders does in Iowa , and holding their fire until then .
clare.malone : I think the polling surprise is a great point , Sarah .
And considering the big Des Moines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weekend , we ’ re kind of in the dark as to where things could be headed .
Hazard any guesses on potential surprises ?
sarahf : I mean , we expect a few polls later today , but I was surprised in this last week that Buttigieg and Warren didn ’ t see more of an uptick .
If anything , Warren actually ticked down more in our forecast this week despite the endorsement from the Des Moines Register , which should have helped her at least somewhat in the polls .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ do better .
Granted she only has a 3 percent chance of winning the most votes in Iowa , but that ’ s been an interesting development to me anyways .
I mean … if anyone other than Sanders and Biden are in the top two at the end of the night on Monday , that ’ s an x-factor , right ?
ameliatd : It ’ s all because of Klobuchar ’ s hot dish , Sarah .
Never doubt the power of tater tots !
nrakich : Klobuchar doing well would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not sure there is room for FIVE front-runners .
If Klobuchar surges , in my mind , someone like Buttigieg would have to crater .
As a reminder , we have never seen more than three candidates get more than 15 percent ( the threshold required to get delegates ) in any state before .
geoffrey.skelley : Definitely agree that it would be surprising if Biden or Sanders were not in the top two , but that ’ s certainly a possibility .
With voters ’ second-choice picks being really important in Iowa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ totally discount anyone in the top four from winning , or anyone in the top five — so Klobuchar , too — from ending up in second or third .
And right now , we have three polling above 15 percent in Iowa and Warren just under that at 14 percent .
Plus , Klobuchar is now right at 10 percent in our polling average .
perry ( Perry Bacon Jr. , senior writer ) : In some ways , I wonder if the buzz about Sanders ’ s potential to win Iowa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nomination happened a week or so too early for him .
And it allowed his opponents within the party to hit him fairly hard , with an argument ( electability ) that Democratic voters really care about .
clare.malone : Ooooh , I like this take .
And the idea that a person can have a “ week too early ” surge seems like a very Iowa phenom .
nrakich : It ’ s amazing how the timing of an election can matter .
Random choices like whether the Iowa caucuses were this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ big difference in who potentially gets elected leader of the free world .
ameliatd : Well , and a scenario like that could be especially helpful for Biden is that his supporters are generally older and perhaps more likely to caucus , too — although some of those folks aren ’ t necessarily regular caucusgoers .
perry : Buttigieg is even trying to get former Republicans to go to the caucuses .
Those people are not going to support Sanders or Warren as a second choice .
geoffrey.skelley : Actually , age is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ caucus electorate — some polls have people under 50 making up as much as 47 percent of the electorate , which would be good news for Sanders , while others have it much lower than that .
This has ramifications for each candidate ’ s poll numbers , but especially Sanders and Biden because their support at the age poles ( oldest and youngest ) are opposite of one another .
sarahf : So OK , say Sanders doesn ’ t win — because as Perry says , he peaked too early — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind Biden … and Warren ?
Is there still room for her to be thought of as a moderate alternative to Sanders ?
Perry : If the turnout is screwed young , I think Bernie will win .
He really needs the electorate to be younger .
geoffrey.skelley : If Warren remains viable in most places , that actually could be quite bad for Sanders .
And that ’ s because she ’ s the one whose backers are most likely to pick Sanders as their second choice .
As the most recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Warren backers picked Sanders as their second choice , whereas no more than 11 percent of the other leading candidates ’ backers chose Sanders as their top second choice .
nrakich : I mean , not to be that guy , Sarah , but in 80 percent of simulations in our model , Sanders could do anything from surge to 43 percent of the vote to drop to 11 percent in Iowa .
And yeah , if he falls that far , he could finish below several other candidates ( for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outcomes in the 80-percent confidence interval is 3 percent to 31 percent ) .
ameliatd : I ’ m also really curious as to what will happen in places like Iowa City , which Bernie won handily in 2016 .
Obviously , a lot of 2016 Sanders ’ s voters are already supporting other candidates .
But is it possible that all of the sudden focus on Bernie actually energizes his young lefty supporters and juices turnout even more ?
Or , to answer your question , Sarah , maybe the attacks on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who actually live and work in college towns , not the students — to give Warren a second look .
geoffrey.skelley : Thing is , because each precinct has a pre-assigned value based on the 2016-2018 Democratic vote , how much you can gain from juiced turnout near college campuses could be limited if it ’ s in select precincts .
nrakich : Right , which is why the actual preferences of Iowa voters is all that matters 😜 sarahf : Lol , what about the possibility for technical glitches and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of going to be making it easier to caucus this time around ?
Do you think that ’ s an x-factor at all ?
ameliatd : I ’ m a little skeptical of whether the satellite caucuses are actually going to make things easier .
There are not that many of them , and they ’ re mostly in the middle of the day or the evening .
Of course , there will be a caucus in Tblisi , Georgia , which could really be what gives one of the candidates their edge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to gather for a couple hours in the evening .
Not like having ~12 hours to show up for 20 minutes and cast a ballot .
ameliatd : Or drop your ballot in the mail !
geoffrey.skelley : So I ’ m not expecting turnout to be crazy high .
nrakich : I think the overarching thing to remember here is that caucuses are always going to be harder to vote in than primaries .
This article , about how difficult it can be for people with physical disabilities to caucus , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ OK , rapid fire , final X-factors going into Monday .
What do you think is super important to keep an eye on ?
I still think there ’ s got to be some kind of polling surprise that we just don ’ t know about yet , or wasn ’ t caught because there were a lot less polls this time around .
… nrakich : I think it will be whether the media makes a big deal out of “ so-and-so winning Iowa , ” even if he or she wins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point .
To me , that is better thought of as a tie , but the way cable news tends to frame things as winners and losers could have a real impact on the narrative of which campaign is surging and which is struggling going into New Hampshire .
For instance , if Warren and Biden effectively tie , I think it will be spun as a win for Warren but a loss for Biden , and I don ’ t think it should be .
geoffrey.skelley : Relatedly , I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ambiguous results because we will have three different outcomes to look at — first preference , final preference and state delegate equivalents , the last of which actually determines delegate counts .
ameliatd : I ’ m going to be a broken record but — turnout !
Who shows up , and where ?
Whose supporters are most jazzed up and enthusiastic ?
That ’ s something that ’ s harder to predict/see until the caucuses are actually happening .
perry : What I ’ m looking for , before Monday night , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats to not back Sanders .
( House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave clearly anti-Sanders remarks on Friday , but they didn ’ t get much attention and she didn ’ t use his name . )
Also , I ’ m watching for some of the lower-tier candidates to point their supporters to all get behind a second-choice person .
( This would not be done by the candidate or their top staffers directly , but more under the radar . )
So would most Yang/Gabbard supporters get behind Sanders ?
Klobuchar backers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to me are whether Warren supporters , in places where she is not viable , mostly go to Sanders and in places where Buttigieg is not viable , if his supporters mostly go to Biden .

What Are The X-Factors That Could Change The Results In Iowa?
Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Our last politics chat before the 2020 Democratic primary kicks off!! And we’re talking Election X factors! Or what things we should be looking at, besides the polls (and our forecast), that could affect who wins on Monday?
[Our Latest Forecast: Who will win the Iowa caucuses?]
geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): To me, in a race that is so close, the number of precincts in which a candidate is either ahead or falling short of the viability threshold – 15 percent at most caucus sites — seems like it could be really important for what happens on Monday. Because say, someone like Bernie Sanders, if his support is concentrated in more urban areas or college towns, does that mean someone like Joe Biden could get more delegate support because he has backing across more rural areas? I don’t know.
nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Yeah, and related to that point: The polls only measure voters’ initial preferences. But caucusgoers are allowed to realign if their candidate doesn’t meet the viability threshold, and then, of course, the delegates awarded are based on that post-realignment total.
In other words, the polls can’t really tell us exactly how votes will translate into delegates. So it will matter whose support is distributed the most efficiently.
sarahf: (Quick side note: For the first time, raw vote tallies from the first and second alignments will be released publicly, as well as the state delegate equivalents that a candidate earns. In the past, the party only reported the delegate tallies.)
ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): Well, and an interesting question along those lines, Geoffrey, is how much will turnout shape the final narrative? In the past, when raw vote totals weren’t released, candidates like Sanders didn’t have as much of an incentive to run up their numbers in places like college towns where they have lots of densely concentrated support. This year, that will be different, and it could make for some confusion when the delegate counts and the raw votes are in.
I’m also curious to see what kind of horse-trading will go on in the caucuses themselves!
geoffrey.skelley: Definitely true, Amelia. I’m looking forward to the possibility of a scenario where Sanders wins the post-realignment raw vote total, but Biden wins the delegate count.
ameliatd: That’s one of the things that makes caucuses so fascinating and unpredictable — people are literally trying to convince each other to join their side as it’s happening.
sarahf: And you’ll be there to see it in action, Amelia! That ought to be wild.
ameliatd: Yes! I will be on the ground at a precinct in Iowa City, which I think will be one of the hubs for a potential Warren/Sanders showdown. My Monday night is going to be full of drama.
sarahf: But play out that scenario you just mentioned, a little bit more, Geoff. How could it work that Sanders wins more votes, but Biden wins more delegates (and therefore Iowa)?
geoffrey.skelley: Basically, every precinct is worth a certain number of state delegate equivalents, which is used to determine delegate allocation for national delegates. So if you get particularly high turnout at a precinct near, say, the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Johnson County, that precinct’s value for delegate purposes is already set based on a calculation determined by the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial Democratic vote share in that precinct. So if Sanders gets like 500 of 600 voters there, it might have the same delegate value as Biden dominating in a different precinct with 150 voters if they are worth the same number of state delegate equivalents. In the 2016 caucuses, for instance, Hillary Clinton swept all 1.6 SDEs in a Waterloo, Iowa, precinct that had 141 people show up, while Sanders got 1.6 of 1.8 SDEs in an Iowa City precinct that had 646 participants. We can’t know what the “popular vote” was in those precincts in 2016 — that’s available for the first time this year — but the delegate value for the two candidates was pretty much the same, even though one precinct had far higher turnout.
nrakich: I’m curious — which of those measures will you guys be paying the most attention to?
sarahf: I mean … I find the whole “both sides could claim victory on caucus night” a bit disingenuous, or at the very least, there should be a heavy burden on the media to report it responsibly. Because you can’t claim victory from the pre-alignment vote total!! That’s not how caucuses work. (Now you can have quibbles with why Iowa caucuses in the first place sure, but this whole sowing confusion narrative bothers me. Let’s not sow confusion!)
nrakich: Why not, Sarah?
That’s the popular vote!
That’s how almost every other state does it, i.e., primary states.
It is the most small-d democratic.
sarahf: That’s true, but Iowa isn’t a primary state! And maybe caucuses should be banned for the reasons you outline (it is really time consuming to caucus), but it’s not like how the winner in Iowa is determined has changed. It’s still based on the number of state delegate equivalents a candidate wins, we’ll just get to see more inside the process, which as a journalist, I’m 100 percent in favor of. More data always, please.
But that means as journalists we have a responsibility to talk about the three different vote totals in the context of how they work within a caucus, e.g. don’t read too much into the pre-alignment vote, because this will change (not every candidate will have enough support to make it to the next round of voting). That vote is the most small-d democratic, as you say, but it’s also not how caucuses work, so we shouldn’t feed into that narrative! Although, I’m sure some candidates will. But whatever. Report the process; don’t sow confusion.
nrakich: My short argument for why the initial preference numbers are the most important is that they’re the best representation of how voters feel — kind of like a massive poll. The state delegate equivalents might matter more for delegate selection, but Iowa is a small state — the number of delegates a candidate gets there is less important than the momentum/vote of confidence he/she receives.
geoffrey.skelley: Right, Nathaniel — in fact, AAPOR (the American Association for Public Opinion Research) recommends that journalists compare poll results from this cycle to those pre-realignment numbers when considering the accuracy of polls.
clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Here’s a pulled-out question, not related to thresholds: Is there anything that could happen in this last weekend to sway things one way or the other for voters still on the bubble? Is it good for the Democrats that all these senators aren’t going to be in the Senate for a drawn-out impeachment trial after all?
ameliatd: I have to imagine, Clare, that the senators are pretty excited about the prospect of getting back to Iowa. They’ve had surrogates campaigning on their behalf, but having the actual candidate there seems like a much better recipe for firing up their supporters — and that enthusiasm can really matter in the caucuses.
clare.malone: Another x-factor to mention: Could some big-name establishment Democrat speak out against Sanders? That sort of stuff has been floating around the past couple of weeks in news stories. It’s the kind of thing you could see happening on a Sunday show or a cable interview over the weekend.
sarahf: I mean, that’s a great question. In theory, Iowa always has at least a few polling surprises, but it’s also kind of hard for me to see Buttigieg, Warren or Amy Klobuchar making a big comeback at this point.
I know, never say never. But it’s hard for me to see this path — don’t @ me!!
Someone from the Democratic establishment speaking out against Sanders, on the other hand … that could be 🔥.
Except Democrats would be smart to not have the spokesperson be Hillary Clinton. I feel like that Hollywood Reporter story about that new documentary where she dished on Sanders, and what it was like working with him in Congress, just fired up his base more than it actually hurt him.
nrakich: I don’t know if any figure in the party is big enough to matter, unless their last name is Obama.
And I don’t think either of the Obamas is going to weigh in at this point.
Mayyyybe if Sanders wins the first few states and he becomes the favorite to win the nomination …
geoffrey.skelley: Which could definitely happen — if he wins Iowa, he’ll be favored in New Hampshire and probably Nevada, too.
ameliatd: It would make sense to me if it were that the big establishment figures were biding their time to see how Sanders does in Iowa, and holding their fire until then.
clare.malone: I think the polling surprise is a great point, Sarah.
And considering the big Des Moines Register poll didn’t drop this weekend, we’re kind of in the dark as to where things could be headed. Hazard any guesses on potential surprises?
sarahf: I mean, we expect a few polls later today, but I was surprised in this last week that Buttigieg and Warren didn’t see more of an uptick. If anything, Warren actually ticked down more in our forecast this week despite the endorsement from the Des Moines Register, which should have helped her at least somewhat in the polls.
If anything, Klobuchar has started to do better. Granted she only has a 3 percent chance of winning the most votes in Iowa, but that’s been an interesting development to me anyways.
I mean … if anyone other than Sanders and Biden are in the top two at the end of the night on Monday, that’s an x-factor, right?
ameliatd: It’s all because of Klobuchar’s hot dish, Sarah. Never doubt the power of tater tots!
sarahf: Lol, that article.
nrakich: Klobuchar doing well would be an x-factor because I’m not sure there is room for FIVE front-runners. If Klobuchar surges, in my mind, someone like Buttigieg would have to crater.
As a reminder, we have never seen more than three candidates get more than 15 percent (the threshold required to get delegates) in any state before.
geoffrey.skelley: Definitely agree that it would be surprising if Biden or Sanders were not in the top two, but that’s certainly a possibility. With voters’ second-choice picks being really important in Iowa, I don’t want to totally discount anyone in the top four from winning, or anyone in the top five — so Klobuchar, too — from ending up in second or third.
And right now, we have three polling above 15 percent in Iowa and Warren just under that at 14 percent. Plus, Klobuchar is now right at 10 percent in our polling average.
perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): In some ways, I wonder if the buzz about Sanders’s potential to win Iowa and that victory catapulting him to the nomination happened a week or so too early for him. And it allowed his opponents within the party to hit him fairly hard, with an argument (electability) that Democratic voters really care about.
clare.malone: Ooooh, I like this take.
Interesting fodder!
And the idea that a person can have a “week too early” surge seems like a very Iowa phenom.
nrakich: It’s amazing how the timing of an election can matter. Random choices like whether the Iowa caucuses were this week or last week can make a big difference in who potentially gets elected leader of the free world.
ameliatd: Well, and a scenario like that could be especially helpful for Biden is that his supporters are generally older and perhaps more likely to caucus, too — although some of those folks aren’t necessarily regular caucusgoers.
perry: Buttigieg is even trying to get former Republicans to go to the caucuses. Those people are not going to support Sanders or Warren as a second choice.
geoffrey.skelley: Actually, age is one of the big questions about the caucus electorate — some polls have people under 50 making up as much as 47 percent of the electorate, which would be good news for Sanders, while others have it much lower than that. This has ramifications for each candidate’s poll numbers, but especially Sanders and Biden because their support at the age poles (oldest and youngest) are opposite of one another.
sarahf: So OK, say Sanders doesn’t win — because as Perry says, he peaked too early — does that put him a few points behind Biden … and Warren? Is there still room for her to be thought of as a moderate alternative to Sanders?
Perry: If the turnout is screwed young, I think Bernie will win. He really needs the electorate to be younger.
geoffrey.skelley: If Warren remains viable in most places, that actually could be quite bad for Sanders. And that’s because she’s the one whose backers are most likely to pick Sanders as their second choice. As the most recent Iowa State/Civiqs poll showed, 33 percent of Warren backers picked Sanders as their second choice, whereas no more than 11 percent of the other leading candidates’ backers chose Sanders as their top second choice.
nrakich: I mean, not to be that guy, Sarah, but in 80 percent of simulations in our model, Sanders could do anything from surge to 43 percent of the vote to drop to 11 percent in Iowa. And yeah, if he falls that far, he could finish below several other candidates (for the record, Warren’s range of outcomes in the 80-percent confidence interval is 3 percent to 31 percent).
ameliatd: I’m also really curious as to what will happen in places like Iowa City, which Bernie won handily in 2016. Obviously, a lot of 2016 Sanders’s voters are already supporting other candidates. But is it possible that all of the sudden focus on Bernie actually energizes his young lefty supporters and juices turnout even more?
Or, to answer your question, Sarah, maybe the attacks on Bernie prompt some progressive folks — the people who actually live and work in college towns, not the students — to give Warren a second look.
geoffrey.skelley: Thing is, because each precinct has a pre-assigned value based on the 2016-2018 Democratic vote, how much you can gain from juiced turnout near college campuses could be limited if it’s in select precincts.
nrakich: Right, which is why the actual preferences of Iowa voters is all that matters 😜
sarahf: Lol, what about the possibility for technical glitches and the fact that Iowa is kind of sort of going to be making it easier to caucus this time around?
Do you think that’s an x-factor at all?
ameliatd: I’m a little skeptical of whether the satellite caucuses are actually going to make things easier. There are not that many of them, and they’re mostly in the middle of the day or the evening.
Of course, there will be a caucus in Tblisi, Georgia, which could really be what gives one of the candidates their edge.
geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, you still have to gather for a couple hours in the evening. Not like having ~12 hours to show up for 20 minutes and cast a ballot.
ameliatd: Or drop your ballot in the mail!
geoffrey.skelley: So I’m not expecting turnout to be crazy high.
nrakich: I think the overarching thing to remember here is that caucuses are always going to be harder to vote in than primaries. This article, about how difficult it can be for people with physical disabilities to caucus, really stuck with me.
#BanTheCaucus
sarahf: OK, rapid fire, final X-factors going into Monday. What do you think is super important to keep an eye on? I still think there’s got to be some kind of polling surprise that we just don’t know about yet, or wasn’t caught because there were a lot less polls this time around. …
nrakich: I think it will be whether the media makes a big deal out of “so-and-so winning Iowa,” even if he or she wins by just a fraction of a percentage point. To me, that is better thought of as a tie, but the way cable news tends to frame things as winners and losers could have a real impact on the narrative of which campaign is surging and which is struggling going into New Hampshire.
For instance, if Warren and Biden effectively tie, I think it will be spun as a win for Warren but a loss for Biden, and I don’t think it should be.
geoffrey.skelley: Relatedly, I’m interested in the possibility of having super ambiguous results because we will have three different outcomes to look at — first preference, final preference and state delegate equivalents, the last of which actually determines delegate counts.
ameliatd: I’m going to be a broken record but — turnout! Who shows up, and where? Whose supporters are most jazzed up and enthusiastic? That’s something that’s harder to predict/see until the caucuses are actually happening.
perry: What I’m looking for, before Monday night, are any clear urgings from really prominent Democrats to not back Sanders. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave clearly anti-Sanders remarks on Friday, but they didn’t get much attention and she didn’t use his name.) Also, I’m watching for some of the lower-tier candidates to point their supporters to all get behind a second-choice person. (This would not be done by the candidate or their top staffers directly, but more under the radar.) So would most Yang/Gabbard supporters get behind Sanders? Klobuchar backers to Biden? The most interesting questions to me are whether Warren supporters, in places where she is not viable, mostly go to Sanders and in places where Buttigieg is not viable, if his supporters mostly go to Biden.
[Our Latest Forecast: Who Will Win The 2020 Democratic Primary?]


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-02--That Last Big Des Moines Register Poll Of Iowa? We’re Not Getting It.

When we talk about polls , it ’ s always important to remember that each one comes with a natural margin of error .
But on Saturday evening , human error may have come into play .
At the last minute , The Des Moines Register , CNN and Selzer & Co. announced that they would not release the results of their final poll of Iowa before Monday ’ s caucuses because of reports that one candidate ’ s name was omitted in at least one interview .
So what exactly happened ?
The cancellation appears to be due to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the campaign of former South Bend , Indiana , Mayor Pete Buttigieg , who said he received a call from a supporter who had not heard Buttigieg listed as an option in one of the survey calls .
Selzer & Co. — the much-respected pollster behind the survey — and its partners were unable to confirm the extent of the problem , so it ’ s still unclear if this was an isolated incident .
Given the amount of coverage this poll was going to receive — CNN had planned an hourlong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cancellation could be a bummer ( or a gift ) for some of the candidates .
An unexpected result for an underdog candidate or a solid lead for either Sen. Bernie Sanders or former Vice President Joe Biden might have dominated the media narrative heading into Monday .
And that coverage could have influenced the attitudes of Iowa voters .
In a cycle where there ’ s been less polling of the Iowa caucuses than in recent years , it ’ s unfortunate that we won ’ t get the last pre-caucus survey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gold standard ” in Iowa , as it would have helped us get a read on how things moved in the final days before voting began .
But we won ’ t be completely in the dark headed into Monday : CBS News/YouGov and Emerson College have already announced that they ’ ll be releasing Iowa surveys on Sunday , and it ’ s possible that another pollster might release new numbers as well .
Yet it ’ s safe to say that this whole episode should reinforce the idea that you should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judge a race .

When we talk about polls, it’s always important to remember that each one comes with a natural margin of error. But on Saturday evening, human error may have come into play. At the last minute, The Des Moines Register, CNN and Selzer & Co. announced that they would not release the results of their final poll of Iowa before Monday’s caucuses because of reports that one candidate’s name was omitted in at least one interview.
[Our Latest Forecast: Who will win the Iowa caucuses?]
So what exactly happened? The cancellation appears to be due to a complaint lodged by a senior official for the campaign of former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who said he received a call from a supporter who had not heard Buttigieg listed as an option in one of the survey calls. Selzer & Co. — the much-respected pollster behind the survey — and its partners were unable to confirm the extent of the problem, so it’s still unclear if this was an isolated incident.
Given the amount of coverage this poll was going to receive — CNN had planned an hourlong program devoted to its results — its cancellation could be a bummer (or a gift) for some of the candidates. An unexpected result for an underdog candidate or a solid lead for either Sen. Bernie Sanders or former Vice President Joe Biden might have dominated the media narrative heading into Monday. And that coverage could have influenced the attitudes of Iowa voters.
In a cycle where there’s been less polling of the Iowa caucuses than in recent years, it’s unfortunate that we won’t get the last pre-caucus survey from the outfit known as the “gold standard” in Iowa, as it would have helped us get a read on how things moved in the final days before voting began. But we won’t be completely in the dark headed into Monday: CBS News/YouGov and Emerson College have already announced that they’ll be releasing Iowa surveys on Sunday, and it’s possible that another pollster might release new numbers as well. Yet it’s safe to say that this whole episode should reinforce the idea that you should never rely on a single poll to judge a race.


fivethirtyeight--2020-02-01--What Fourth-Quarter Fundraising Can Tell Us About 2020

When a presidential candidate raises a lot of money , they ’ re probably going to tell you about it , which leads to a lot of headlines like this : Those headlines aren ’ t wrong , but they also don ’ t tell you that much on their own .
That ’ s because each candidate who ’ s bragging about his or her fundraising total is doing it in a vacuum .
It ’ s tough to know whether to care about , say , Bernie Sanders ’ s haul without knowing what the other candidates brought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ file detailed reports of their fundraising and spending at least once a quarter .
This information , which is made public by the Federal Election Commission , allows for a better kind of analysis : one that compares each candidate to all the others .
We ’ re going to help you do that .
This primary season , FiveThirtyEight and the Center for Public Integrity , a nonprofit investigative news organization , are teaming up to track those filings and update this page with the latest numbers each quarter .
Fundraising is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but fundraising numbers alone can ’ t always tell you whether a campaign is going strong or hitting the skids .
( For example , women and people of color generally have a harder time raising money than white men do . )
Instead , think of fundraising as one more indicator of campaign health , alongside things like endorsements , polls and media coverage .
Together , all these metrics give us a sense of who is attracting attention heading into the primaries and caucuses .
Here ’ s how the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Totals here include all the money a candidate raised for the presidential race this quarter , regardless of whether it ’ s earmarked for the primary or the general election .
Michael Bloomberg led the Democrats this quarter , raising $ 200.4 million total , of which 0 percent was raised from individual donors and 99.9 percent came from his own wallet .
That total is $ 43.7 million more than Tom Steyer , who came in second with $ 156.6 million , and $ 159.4 million more than President Trump , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quarter .
But wait , you might grumble , this is exactly the sort of boring financial coverage that gives people an incomplete picture of the race !
You ’ d have a point .
In general , these numbers make more sense when they ’ re judged against candidates ’ expectations .
We ’ ve written before about the relationship between poll numbers and name recognition — namely , politicians tend to have higher net favorability ratings when more voters know who they are — and it stands to reason that higher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as well .
After all , people don ’ t donate to candidates they ’ ve never heard of .
Here ’ s how Democratic candidates ’ fundraising this quarter compares to their name recognition .
Bernie Sanders , who leads in name recognition at 91.7 percent , was the first-place fundraiser in terms of money raised from individual donors in the fourth quarter .
( This total excludes money raised from other sources , like transfers from political committees and money the candidate gave to their own campaign . )
Candidates ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not just money raised from individual donors , but also money from PACs , money left over from previous campaigns and money from the candidate ’ s own pocket .
Here ’ s where each Democratic candidate ’ s money came from so far this year .
But how fast candidates are bringing money in isn ’ t the only relevant measure here ; it also helps to know how fast money is flowing out .
Burn rate — total spent divided by total raised — measures how quickly candidates are spending their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how much of a buffer a campaign has socked away , which could help it weather a rough patch if costs rise or donations plummet .
Presidential campaigns raise and spend money faster than a Silicon Valley startup , so having a safety net is essential to keeping operations up in the lean times .
There aren ’ t any objectively good or bad numbers here .
But according to an analysis by Echelon Insights , the average presidential campaign had a 69 percent burn rate through Sept. 30 of the year before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ putting a lot of weight on grassroots fundraising this election cycle .
That ’ s in part because of ActBlue , an online Democratic fundraising tool that has raised over $ 3 billion for the party by helping to fuel a surge of small-dollar donations.1 When the Democratic National Committee made fundraising a criterion in determining which candidates qualify for the party ’ s first debates , it specified a minimum number of donors per candidate but not a minimum dollar number , prioritizing candidates who could demonstrate broad national support even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one is doing better with small donors in 2019 than Bernie Sanders , who raised $ 60.6 million , or 55.7 percent of his total , from donors who gave $ 200 or less.3 Overall this year , 24.2 percent of Democrats ’ funding came from small donors .
For Trump , 16.6 percent of his total haul came from people who gave less than $ 200 .
Here ’ s the breakdown for all the Democrats as a group and for Trump on his own for 2019.4 So , how much does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own Maggie Koerth-Baker wrote in 2018 that fundraising is an inefficient metric for assessing general elections , but it ’ s pretty useful for gauging the primaries .
Winning the nomination requires building name recognition and demonstrating viability , particularly in a field with over a dozen candidates .
A great fundraising quarter signals to voters — and the DNC — that a candidate is on track to do just that .
CORRECTION ( Feb. 1 , 2020 , 7:30 p.m. ) : Due to a coding error affecting candidates who began fundraising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this story gave an incorrect cash-on-hand number for Andrew Yang .

When a presidential candidate raises a lot of money, they’re probably going to tell you about it, which leads to a lot of headlines like this:
Those headlines aren’t wrong, but they also don’t tell you that much on their own. That’s because each candidate who’s bragging about his or her fundraising total is doing it in a vacuum. It’s tough to know whether to care about, say, Bernie Sanders’s haul without knowing what the other candidates brought in.
Luckily, all candidates must file detailed reports of their fundraising and spending at least once a quarter. This information, which is made public by the Federal Election Commission, allows for a better kind of analysis: one that compares each candidate to all the others. We’re going to help you do that.
This primary season, FiveThirtyEight and the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization, are teaming up to track those filings and update this page with the latest numbers each quarter. Fundraising is obviously hugely important to a political campaign, but fundraising numbers alone can’t always tell you whether a campaign is going strong or hitting the skids. (For example, women and people of color generally have a harder time raising money than white men do.) Instead, think of fundraising as one more indicator of campaign health, alongside things like endorsements, polls and media coverage. Together, all these metrics give us a sense of who is attracting attention heading into the primaries and caucuses.
Here’s how the 2020 money race is shaping up. Totals here include all the money a candidate raised for the presidential race this quarter, regardless of whether it’s earmarked for the primary or the general election.
The leader this quarter
Michael Bloomberg led the Democrats this quarter, raising $200.4 million total, of which 0 percent was raised from individual donors and 99.9 percent came from his own wallet. That total is $43.7 million more than Tom Steyer, who came in second with $156.6 million, and $159.4 million more than President Trump, who raised $41.0 million in the fourth quarter. But wait, you might grumble, this is exactly the sort of boring financial coverage that gives people an incomplete picture of the race!
You’d have a point. In general, these numbers make more sense when they’re judged against candidates’ expectations. We’ve written before about the relationship between poll numbers and name recognition — namely, politicians tend to have higher net favorability ratings when more voters know who they are — and it stands to reason that higher name recognition could translate to more money as well. After all, people don’t donate to candidates they’ve never heard of.
Here’s how Democratic candidates’ fundraising this quarter compares to their name recognition.
Big names tend to get more cash Not well known, raised a lot Well known, raised a lot Not well known, raised a little Well known, raised a little Estimated name recognition: % Total raised: $NaNM Name recognition was estimated using favorability polls — the share of respondents who had any opinion (positive or negative) of a candidate is used as a proxy for the share of people who know who the candidate is.
Bernie Sanders, who leads in name recognition at 91.7 percent, was the first-place fundraiser in terms of money raised from individual donors in the fourth quarter. (This total excludes money raised from other sources, like transfers from political committees and money the candidate gave to their own campaign.)
This year’s donors
Candidates’ fundraising totals for each quarter generally include not just money raised from individual donors, but also money from PACs, money left over from previous campaigns and money from the candidate’s own pocket.
Here’s where each Democratic candidate’s money came from so far this year.
Burn rate in 2019
But how fast candidates are bringing money in isn’t the only relevant measure here; it also helps to know how fast money is flowing out. Burn rate — total spent divided by total raised — measures how quickly candidates are spending their money, and cash on hand shows how much of a buffer a campaign has socked away, which could help it weather a rough patch if costs rise or donations plummet. Presidential campaigns raise and spend money faster than a Silicon Valley startup, so having a safety net is essential to keeping operations up in the lean times.
name total raised total spent cash on hand burn rate Tom Steyer $206.3M $200.9M $5.4M 97.4% Michael Bloomberg 200.4 188.4 12.0 94.0 Michael Bennet 6.9 6.3 0.5 92.4 Andrew Yang 31.1 27.4 3.7 88.2 Joe Biden 61.0 52.1 8.9 85.3 Bernie Sanders 108.9 90.7 18.2 83.3 Elizabeth Warren 82.0 68.3 13.7 83.3 Amy Klobuchar 29.0 24.0 5.0 82.8 Pete Buttigieg 76.8 62.3 14.5 81.1 Tulsi Gabbard 12.1 9.4 2.8 77.2 Deval Patrick 2.3 0.9 1.4 38.3
There aren’t any objectively good or bad numbers here. But according to an analysis by Echelon Insights, the average presidential campaign had a 69 percent burn rate through Sept. 30 of the year before the election.
Comparing the parties
The Democratic Party is putting a lot of weight on grassroots fundraising this election cycle. That’s in part because of ActBlue, an online Democratic fundraising tool that has raised over $3 billion for the party by helping to fuel a surge of small-dollar donations.1 When the Democratic National Committee made fundraising a criterion in determining which candidates qualify for the party’s first debates, it specified a minimum number of donors per candidate but not a minimum dollar number, prioritizing candidates who could demonstrate broad national support even if their fundraising totals were relatively low.2
No one is doing better with small donors in 2019 than Bernie Sanders, who raised $60.6 million, or 55.7 percent of his total, from donors who gave $200 or less.3
Overall this year, 24.2 percent of Democrats’ funding came from small donors. For Trump, 16.6 percent of his total haul came from people who gave less than $200. Here’s the breakdown for all the Democrats as a group and for Trump on his own for 2019.4
Democratic field $TKTK $NaNM
Trump $TKTK Trump’s 2019 transfer money was raised in partnership with the Republican Party $NaNM
Big donors Individuals who gave more than $200 Small donors Individuals who gave a total of $200 or less Self-funding Money the candidate donated or loaned to the campaign PACs Independent fundraising groups Transfers Money moved over from past campaigns or joint fundraising efforts Other All other categories
So, how much does all this matter? FiveThirtyEight’s own Maggie Koerth-Baker wrote in 2018 that fundraising is an inefficient metric for assessing general elections, but it’s pretty useful for gauging the primaries. Winning the nomination requires building name recognition and demonstrating viability, particularly in a field with over a dozen candidates. A great fundraising quarter signals to voters — and the DNC — that a candidate is on track to do just that.
CORRECTION (Feb. 1, 2020, 7:30 p.m.): Due to a coding error affecting candidates who began fundraising before 2019, a previous version of this story gave an incorrect cash-on-hand number for Andrew Yang.