Can Pete Buttigieg catch Bernie Sanders? Also inside, we have a link to our debate-night live chat.
Welcome to Poll Watch from On Politics. Every Friday, we’ll bring you the latest data and analysis to track the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. |
Current state of the race |
Who’s up? Who’s down? Here’s the latest. |
The Iowa caucuses did not bring much clarity to the Democratic race. But they set in motion a tough new series of tests for the top presidential candidates that may come to a head next week in New Hampshire. |
The two top finishers in Iowa, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, have already been on the rise in New Hampshire, according to our polling average. Mr. Sanders is the clear leader in the state, though not by an overwhelming margin, while Mr. Buttigieg recently caught up with Joe Biden to effectively tie him for second place. The question now is whether Mr. Buttigieg can keep rising, buoyed by his finish in Iowa, and upset Mr. Sanders in a Northeastern state long seen as his stronghold. |
Should that happen, it could throw the Democratic race into further turmoil at the national level, giving Mr. Buttigieg a new aura of strength and momentum and upending Mr. Sanders’s hoped-for path through the early states. A victory in New Hampshire could also give Mr. Buttigieg a decisive upper hand over the other candidates from the Democratic Party’s moderate wing, including Mr. Biden and Amy Klobuchar. |
But without winning New Hampshire, Mr. Buttigieg’s path forward is highly uncertain, especially as the race heads into more diverse and urban states. He fell behind Michael Bloomberg in our national polling average last month, and unless he manages a major breakthrough soon, he may lack the financial means to compete aggressively in the biggest March primary states. |
And if Mr. Sanders carries New Hampshire by a convincing margin, it could help rally the left behind his candidacy at a moment when he is already close to overtaking Mr. Biden in our national polling average. So far, Mr. Sanders is the only candidate raising enough money to compete with Mr. Bloomberg on TV ads in Super Tuesday states, and his campaign announced on Thursday that he had raised $25 million in January alone. No other candidate has released a monthly fund-raising number. |
For Mr. Biden, Ms. Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, the fight for New Hampshire could have mortal consequences. Ms. Klobuchar devised her entire campaign strategy around Iowa and New Hampshire; she is unlikely to have a path forward in the race without a sudden jolt of momentum. And while Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren have important fundamental strengths that could sustain them in a pinch — such as Mr. Biden’s support from black voters and Ms. Warren’s support from liberal women — they are both likely to face serious financial limitations without a compelling performance next week. |
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The latest polls are a boon to Buttigieg |
 | | Pete Buttigieg campaigning in Merrimack, N.H., on Thursday. Mr. Buttigieg and Senator Bernie Sanders are currently vying for first place in the still-uncalled Iowa caucuses.Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times |
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The newest polls of the New Hampshire Democratic primary show even more strength for Pete Buttigieg than he has in The Times’s New Hampshire polling average, which includes a wider range of polls over time and can lag the latest data. |
These results set up a possible outcome that few had given much thought to before this week: Mr. Sanders and Mr. Buttigieg may emerge from the two earliest-voting states with roughly equal momentum, leaving even their strongest rivals scrambling to regain footing — even as the race expands to more diverse contests in the South and West. |
The Monmouth poll showed Mr. Sanders with the support of 24 percent of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire, and Mr. Buttigieg with 20 percent. Those numbers are technically within the poll’s margin of error of each other. Joe Biden was at 17 percent and Elizabeth Warren had 13 percent. Amy Klobuchar was at 9 percent. |
The Suffolk numbers were even tighter: Mr. Sanders was at 24 percent, and Mr. Buttigieg was at 23 percent. No other candidate was within 10 points of them in that poll. |
Suffolk has been polling New Hampshire voters constantly this week, releasing new results from its “tracking poll” every day. According to the poll, Mr. Buttigieg’s support has doubled since the beginning of the week, when he captured just 11 percent of likely voters. |
While the Monmouth poll had a four-day collection period, which began on the day of the Iowa caucuses, the latest Globe/Suffolk poll was only collected on Wednesday and Thursday. That meant the news of Mr. Buttigieg’s unexpectedly strong showing in Iowa had sunk in a bit more by the time that poll’s field period began. |
A little over half of primary voters in both polls said they had yet to firmly settle on a Democratic candidate. |
“I don’t think Iowa has sunk in yet — things are still shifting there,” Patrick Murray, who runs the Monmouth poll, said in an interview. But even without an outright win, Mr. Buttigieg’s strong showing has the potential to bring him more attention, Mr. Murray said — particularly if he performs strongly in the Democratic debate tonight in Manchester, N.H. |
That’s because Mr. Murray sees the most uncertainty existing among electability-minded voters — those who say they are most interested in finding a candidate who will defeat President Trump. And Mr. Buttigieg tends to be more popular among these voters than among those who prioritize particular issues. |
“Some of these other supporters of Biden and Klobuchar are the ones taking a look, because they’re the ones most concerned about electability,” Mr. Murray said, referring to voter curiosity about Mr. Buttigieg. |
There is sometimes a temptation to lump Iowa and New Hampshire together as a kind of opening chapter to the nominating process. After all, both are heavily white states and nonrepresentative of the country’s population at large. And indeed, the results this year could end up being quite similar in both states. |
But the two contests differ significantly. Iowa’s consists of caucuses — which favor candidates with younger and more activist supporters — and includes only Democrats. New Hampshire’s election is a simple primary, and is also open to political independents. |
In 2016, when Mr. Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the primary there, he relied largely on the support of independent voters. He is himself a political independent, and he still does well among this group. But the 26 percent support he is now earning from non-Democrats in the Monmouth poll is still far less than the nearly three-quarters of independent voters he got in 2016. |
This reflects the complications of a more crowded field this year, and the fact that the independent voters who participate on Tuesday may skew slightly more conservative than they did in 2016. That is because there was a competitive Republican primary that year. With Mr. Trump’s nomination all but guaranteed among Republicans this year, a broader cross-section of independents may consider weighing in on the Democratic race. |
Mr. Buttigieg, who is the only other candidate to break 20 percent among non-Democrats in the Monmouth poll, could stand to gain. |
Join us for our debate-night live chat |
We’re live-chatting during tonight’s debate — the last before the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. Follow our analysis with Lisa Lerer, Nick Corasaniti, Sydney Ember, Trip Gabriel, Maggie Haberman and Astead Herndon, many of whom are reporting from Manchester, N.H. |
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