538 New Hampshire forecast (final)
Sanders - 10.7
Buttigieg - 8.8
Warren - 2.1
Biden - 1.5
Other - 0.9
These are mean values. The modal outcome for everyone but Sanders and Buttigieg is zero delegates.
No question that Warren’s campaign is generally stronger; she has a higher floor of established support and a stronger organization. I’m not sure I buy that she and Pete are really competing for the exact same voters; I think Pete’s voters are much less likely to identify as “progressive”. But middle class and white, for sure.
On that theory, then, the best thing for Warren would be if Pete drops out before rather than after Super Tuesday. Which is unlikely to happen unless she somehow beats him out for second today. QED, the NH race is super important for Warren.
Nah, in IA and NH, he’s been polling way above his national polls because he’s thrown everything he had into those two states.
You can’t do that on Super Tuesday, because you can’t be everywhere at once. Sure, he’ll get some sort of bounce across the board, but probably got most of it already from a maybe-first-place in Iowa. (RCP has him at 10.4% nationally, 538 has him at 9.5%, way below his support in either of the first two states. So we’re going from an environment where Buttigieg’s consistently been polling ahead of Warren, to one where he’s been polling consistently behind her. I would say that change is to her advantage.
No question, but it’s not a night and day difference; 538 only has Warren at 13.2 nationally. I’m looking at the 538 averages for NV, SC and the Super Tuesday States, and it’s about the same picture; Warren leads Pete in most of them, but only by a few points, and neither of them are doing at all well anywhere (except that Warren is leading in MA).
Like right now, if Buttigieg dropped out, Warren would have to pick up literally ALL his supporters in order to move into a tie with Sanders in the 538 average.
If Buttigieg dropped out his supporters are more likely to go for Biden than Warren.
It looks like Biden has given up on New Hampshire. He’s already moved on to South Carolina. Oddly, since the next vote is Nevada, but I guess he really is making a last ditch stand in South Carolina.
That’s weird. Everyone has always expected him to win South Carolina. In Nevada, he’s been neck and neck with Bernie the whole campaign; Bernie has moved twenty points up since Iowa, though. But if he gets shellacked in the first three States, will winning SC really be the kind of game-changing narrative he needs at that point? Seems like NV is his only realistic chance to pull off an impressive win before Super Tuesday. If I were him, I’d be focused there; if he actually has to try hard in order to win SC, he’s not going anywhere.
But there’s probably a reason Buttigieg’s odds in the RCP betting site avg are 15.7% v Warren’s at 6.3%.
Besides positive bounce there’s negative bounce. Biden is viewed by betting markets as now less likely than Buttigieg. Very possibly the big numbers Biden has in various other states will collapse, and have to go to somebody. Likewise Warren might be widely declared dead if she finishes 4th today, which doesn’t mean she’ll admit it right away even if so, but her polling more than Buttigieg nationally probably isn’t very meaningful right now IMO (it would once again be perhaps if she overpeforms in NH). It’s probably more immediately relevant to talk about where Warren’s support goes if she quits than where Buttigieg’s goes if he quits.
I don’t know. I could see Buttigieg supporters going for Klobuchar over Biden. I’m not sure Uncle Joe has the energy to carry the Buttigieg supporters.
For people speculating on where voters could move, I’d suggest looking at Morning Consult’s interactive page.
Among other things, it polls second preferences, and for Buttigieg supporters, the breakdown is 20% for Bloomberg, 19% for Biden and Sanders and Warren tied at 17% (presumably Klobuchar didn’t get a high enough percentage to be included and the site doesn’t appear to list other/don’t know percentages unfortunately).
If he does stay in till Super Tuesday things will likely become a huge mess. My prediction is that in that situation Biden pulls enough support from the other moderates so that Bernie ends up with a plurality but not a majority of the delegates. If that happens I don’t see Bernie going quietly if moderates all settle on Buttigieg or Bloomberg. The convention is likely to get nasty and hand Trump an easy victory. In other words if Biden finishes fourth or fifth tonight he really needs to drop out for the good of the party.
538 has an auto-updating results display that shows how the votes are coming in. It also shows where a candidate is compared to where the final polling put them before the vote started.
Klobuchar doing amazing in the early results with 10% in. If that holds, she will get a huge bump. Biden is currently fifth. I don’t think he can spin that in any positive way at all.
Andrew Yang just suspended his campaign -
Steve Kornacki (MSNBC) just startled the hell out of me. I turn on the TV and hear him say, “Buttigieg has won this.” I have no belief in any Iowa Bernie conspiracy believers, whatsoever, but the thought immediately passed through my brain that maybe they are on to something…
He was doing his usual schtick, and only referring to a single country somewhere. 
Anyway, yes, Klobuchar is certainly the big surprise so far.
Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber: “I didn’t even see it coming!”
Bernie narrowly leading…
Warren’s result disappointing as well. This is a neighboring state. Going forward it is probably a three way race between Bernie on one side and Pete and Amy on the “I’m not as crazy as Bernie” side.
Biden has no more firewall as he is no longer favored in South Carolina. 2020 Democratic Primary: Who will win the South Carolina primary? | FiveThirtyEight
I’m certainly surprised that Amy is this strong, looks like Warren and especially Biden are collapsing and Amy’s getting a lot of their votes. I was listening to NPR most of the day and they kept mentioning about Biden leaving NH early for SC.
Sen. Michael Bennet also drops out