IA-Change Research: Biden & Sanders tied, others not far behind

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://iowastartingline.com/2019/05/20/starting-line-change-research-poll-biden-sanders-locked-in-iowa-tie/

Biden 24
Sanders 24
Buttigieg 14
Warren 12
Harris 10
O'Rourke 5
Others 2 or less

[Zaybay]

Change Research seems to be more Sanders friendly than the other pollsters. But still, it does appear that Sanders has regained some support, while Biden has lost some from his peak.

If such a result were to occur, only Biden and Sanders would get delegates. For the race to not be just Sanders vs Biden, someone's gotta break the 15% marker in Iowa.

[Politician]

Junk poll! Biden isn't leading by 50 pointz!

[Gustaf]

Change Research seems to be more Sanders friendly than the other pollsters. But still, it does appear that Sanders has regained some support, while Biden has lost some from his peak.

If such a result were to occur, only Biden and Sanders would get delegates. For the race to not be just Sanders vs Biden, someone's gotta break the 15% marker in Iowa.

You gotta keep in mind though that, unless they changed this system (and I don't think they have), this applies at each caucus location with a possibility of switching. So if this result were to happen in a bellweather Iowa caucus location, the supporters of other candidates would get to switch around.

[izixs]

Change Research seems to be more Sanders friendly than the other pollsters. But still, it does appear that Sanders has regained some support, while Biden has lost some from his peak.

If such a result were to occur, only Biden and Sanders would get delegates. For the race to not be just Sanders vs Biden, someone's gotta break the 15% marker in Iowa.

You gotta keep in mind though that, unless they changed this system (and I don't think they have), this applies at each caucus location with a possibility of switching. So if this result were to happen in a bellweather Iowa caucus location, the supporters of other candidates would get to switch around.

Exactly. There's universes possible where some minor candidates have sufficiently concentrated support to get a few national delegates at the end of the process despite getting under 5% during the actual caucuses at the expense of one of the leaders. Unlikely yes, but quite possible. Especially if the major candidates don't operate a sensible county, district, and state convention plan to insure all their delegates moving up through the system actually show up for the specified conventions while the minor candidate's people show up as alternates to fill in the empty spaces. Tis also possibilities of folks changing their mind throughout the process, going from one candidate to another depending on the convention/caucus level in order to insure that they become a national delegate, which could easily enough tip some scales one way or another depending on the local political geography.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

Change Research is a C+ pollster, as "good" as Rasmussen, and, thus, should be treated accordingly.

[Zaybay]

Change Research seems to be more Sanders friendly than the other pollsters. But still, it does appear that Sanders has regained some support, while Biden has lost some from his peak.

If such a result were to occur, only Biden and Sanders would get delegates. For the race to not be just Sanders vs Biden, someone's gotta break the 15% marker in Iowa.

You gotta keep in mind though that, unless they changed this system (and I don't think they have), this applies at each caucus location with a possibility of switching. So if this result were to happen in a bellweather Iowa caucus location, the supporters of other candidates would get to switch around.

Thing is that if only Sanders and Biden get delegates in IA, then momentum will be on their side. Voters will naturally flow towards the two from the minor candidates. At that point, a minor candidate would need to claw back momentum by doing well in the other 3 states, a rather difficult feat. If a minor candidate gets 15%(in this case it would be Buttigieg), then they can obtain some momentum and put up a strong showing.

You need that 15% to start off with to get your campaign going.

[The Mikado]

Change Research seems to be more Sanders friendly than the other pollsters. But still, it does appear that Sanders has regained some support, while Biden has lost some from his peak.

If such a result were to occur, only Biden and Sanders would get delegates. For the race to not be just Sanders vs Biden, someone's gotta break the 15% marker in Iowa.

You gotta keep in mind though that, unless they changed this system (and I don't think they have), this applies at each caucus location with a possibility of switching. So if this result were to happen in a bellweather Iowa caucus location, the supporters of other candidates would get to switch around.

Thing is that if only Sanders and Biden get delegates in IA, then momentum will be on their side. Voters will naturally flow towards the two from the minor candidates. At that point, a minor candidate would need to claw back momentum by doing well in the other 3 states, a rather difficult feat. If a minor candidate gets 15%(in this case it would be Buttigieg), then they can obtain some momentum and put up a strong showing.

You need that 15% to start off with to get your campaign going.

The point is that Buttigieg or Warren (for example) could easily hit the delegate threshold on these numbers due to the redistribution of people who went for nonviable candidates in each of the caucus sites.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Isn’t delegate stuff figured out on a congressional level too? Someone polling st 14% will probably break 15% in at least one of four districts.

[Mr. Morden]

Iowa's a small state with few delegates.  The delegates from Iowa aren't really important.  What matters, from the perspective of impacting candidate momentum for future contests that *do* have many delegates, is the topline support numbers.  What numbers are the media presenting on caucus night?  In the case of the 2008 caucuses, for example, it was:

Obama 38%
Edwards 30%
Clinton 29%

That's what the media was talking about.  Not the fact that that only translated to one more delegate to the DNC for Obama than Clinton.

But the thing is, of course, in Iowa's caucus system, those %ages aren't really raw popular vote numbers.  They're the support shown by voters after reallocation of support because of the lower tier candidates not being viable **in each individual precinct**.  That's the scale at which hitting 15% matters.

Now, this'll further be complicated this time around by the fact that the Iowa Democratic Party says that in the interest of transparency, they're going to release the breakdown of initial voter preferences before reallocation.  So I'm actually not sure how they're going to report this on caucus night.  Will we get two sets of numbers?  One with initial support, and one with the state delegate equivalents?  And if so, then does the media count the first one as the "real" result or not?

[The Mikado]

It's further complicated by the new absentee voting counting as one big caucus site but capped at 10% of the overall delegates (for the % number) no matter how many people participate through absentee measures, which might skew the popular vote/caucus delegate thing even more.

[The Mikado]

Also, Mr. Morden's post gets at what I was saying earlier about what the results will actually look like.

This poll probably translates to something like:

Biden and Sanders both ~35
Buttigieg 16
Warren 10
Harris 3
Other 1

Once you actually factor in the caucus process and how every caucus site will eliminate candidates below viability there.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

I'm fine with Uncle Joe or Bernie.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

If Bernie wins IA and NH, Biden can be upsetted.  This race isn't over like it was thought to be.

If Biden, loses the nomination, it will serve Ed Rendell right, for trying to take control of the primary. Whom is Biden's primary backer.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

Yeah I think Biden will collapse.