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

[Tintrlvr]

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

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

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

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

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

[Tintrlvr]

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

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

[Tintrlvr]

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

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

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

Clinton - Biden
Edwards - Warren?
Obama - Buttigieg

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

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

[Tintrlvr]

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

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

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

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

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

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