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

[indietraveler]

Wow so looking at the breakdown by age, Liz and Pete appear to be in the best shape here if it's really this close.

Keep in mind the 15% threshold. This indicates Biden is likely to do terrible in the higher populated college towns and Sanders will likely struggle in less populated older communities.

I'd much rather be Warren or Buttigieg right now where your distribution among age is more spread out, thus more likely to hit at least 15% everywhere throughout the state. In 2008 Obama decisively won younger voters but still captured nearly 20% of senior voters behind Clinton and Edwards.

My take based on this poll:

1. Warren
2. Buttigieg


3. Biden
4. Sanders

[indietraveler]

Remember that you need 15% to be viable

Keep in mind the 15% threshold.

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

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

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

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

[indietraveler]

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

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

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

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

[indietraveler]

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

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

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

and also here:

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

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

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

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