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Could Sanders Sweep Iowa And New Hampshire?

ILLUSTRATION BY FIVETHIRTYEIGHT / FABIO BUONOCORE

JAN. 28, 2020, AT 8:43 PM

Election Update: Sanders Is

Pulling Closer To Biden, But
He’s Still Got A Ways To Go
By Nathaniel Rakich

Filed under 2020 Election

# " !

What’s gotten into Bernie Sanders? On

Sunday, my colleague Geoffrey Skelley noted
that, according to FiveThirtyEight’s forecast
of the Democratic presidential primary, the
Vermont senator had shot up to a 1 in 4
chance (26 percent) of winning a majority of
pledged delegates. Now, as of Tuesday
evening, Sanders’s chances are up to 3 in 10
(31 percent) — that’s a 5-point jump in just
48 hours! That’s easily the best chance our
model has given Sanders to date.

[Our Latest Forecast: Who Will Win The

2020 Democratic Primary?]

With a 2 in 5 (41 percent) shot of winning a

majority of pledged delegates, former Vice
President Joe Biden still leads our forecast
overall, but there’s now far less room
separating him from Sanders. However, the
gap between them is still significant — a 30
percent chance that something will happen
is, mathematically speaking, a lot different
from a 40 percent chance. Sen. Elizabeth
Warren and former South Bend, Indiana,
Mayor Pete Buttigieg, on the other hand,
might be in real trouble: Their chances have
been steadily declining to the point where
their odds are now just 1 in 15 for Warren
and 1 in 20 for Buttigieg. By way of
comparison, as recently as Jan. 10, Warren
had a 1 in 8 shot, and Buttigieg sat at 1 in
10.

Warren and Buttigieg are doing better in

Iowa, but it does seem as if in recent days,
the first-in-the-nation caucus state has
become more of a two-way race. Our model
currently gives Sanders (a 2 in 5 chance, or
37 percent) the best odds of winning the
most votes there, followed closely by Biden
(1 in 3, or 35 percent). And two recent polls
have helped buoy Sanders’s chances,
putting the Vermonter in the lead in Iowa.
However, both surveys were from pollsters
that tend to show fairly strong results for
Sanders, so those leads may not be as wide
as they seem:

On Sunday night, we got an Emerson

College poll of Iowa that put Sanders
at 30 percent and Biden at 21 percent
(followed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 13
percent, Warren at 11 percent and
Buttigieg at 10 percent). However,
Emerson has shown good numbers for
Sanders all cycle relative to other
pollsters, so, a"er adjusting for house
effects, our model treats that as
Sanders having hit 24 percent and
Biden as having hit 20 percent. (So this
poll still represents a Sanders lead, but
as you can see his lead isn’t quite as
large.) The poll was nonetheless an
improvement for Sanders over
Emerson’s previous Iowa poll, from
early December, which put Biden at 23
percent and Sanders at 22 percent.
And on Tuesday, Change Research put
out a new poll showing Sanders at 27
percent, Buttigieg at 19 percent, Biden
at 18 percent and Warren at 15 percent
in Iowa. However, Change polls have
also tended to overestimate Sanders
and underestimate Biden, so our
model treated this as more of a virtual
tie between Sanders and Biden, giving
them about 22 percent apiece in the
model.1

New Hampshire, on the other hand, is

beginning to dri" out of the “competitive”
column. According to our model, Sanders
currently has a 1 in 2 (49 percent) chance of
winning the most votes in the Granite State.
The next-likeliest victors are Buttigieg and
Biden, but both are pretty far behind with
only a 1 in 5 chance. And of the two new
polls we’ve gotten in New Hampshire so far
this week, both held very good news for
Sanders, especially given the fact that
neither have particularly strong house
effects:

According to a Franklin Pierce

University/Boston Herald/NBC10 poll
conducted by RKM Research and
Communications, Sanders now sits at
29 percent in the Granite State, with
Biden at 22 percent, Warren at 16
percent and Buttigieg at 10 percent.
That represented a 7-point gain for
Sanders over the same pollster’s
findings just two weeks ago. Again,
Biden (down 4 points), Warren (down
2 points) and Buttigieg (up 3 points)
experienced less dramatic changes.
And in its first New Hampshire poll of
the cycle, American Research Group
gave Sanders a very impressive lead.
He has 28 percent support in the poll,
while no other candidate has more
than 13 percent.

We also got three new national surveys of

the Democratic primary on Monday and
Tuesday, although their numbers were not
as good for Sanders as the state polls, as
Biden was still the leader in all three polls.

Of the three, Echelon Insights painted

the best picture for Sanders: Biden
garnered 26 percent support — down
11 points from the firm’s December
poll — while Sanders nearly matched
him at 23 percent — up 9 points from
December. (Notably, former New York
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was the
one who finished third in Echelon’s
poll, with 13 percent — however, our
model is still skeptical about his
chances overall because he is not
contesting the first four states, but his
unorthodox campaign strategy also
makes him hard to forecast.) But
considering Echelon has historically
had fairly high numbers for Biden, the
fact that Sanders almost caught him is
at least somewhat noteworthy.
According to Quinnipiac University,
Biden now has 26 percent support
nationwide, while Sanders is in a solid
second place at 21 percent. However,
on the downside for Sanders,
Quinnipiac hasn’t observed much
movement in the past two weeks, as its
Jan. 8-12 survey put Biden at 25
percent and Sanders at 19 percent.
Finally, this week’s installment of
Morning Consult’s weekly poll found
Biden at 29 percent and Sanders at 23
percent. That’s virtually unchanged
from their last poll, conducted Jan. 15-
19, that put Biden at 29 percent and
Sanders at 24 percent. (However,
Morning Consult also has a pretty
large pro-Biden house effect, so it’s not
necessarily that great of a finding for
Biden.)

Finally, it’s worth noting Sanders’s strength

in Nevada. We haven’t seen a poll of Nevada
in the last couple weeks, but based on the
fact that Sanders now has a good shot at
winning both Iowa and New Hampshire, our
model now puts him on track to win the
Silver State. He currently has a 1 in 2 (45
percent) chance to win the most votes in
Nevada, a fair bit ahead of Biden, who — at
odds of 1 in 3 (34 percent) — is in second
place. However, Biden remains a solid
favorite in South Carolina, with a 3 in 5 (62
percent) chance of prevailing. By contrast,
Sanders has a 1 in 4 (27 percent) chance.

In other words, our model now thinks that

Sanders has a good chance to win the first
three states to vote this primary season.
However, Biden remains the more likely
candidate to win a delegate majority overall.
So the question is, if Sanders does succeed
in winning Iowa, New Hampshire and/or
Nevada, will he get enough of a polling
bounce to knock Biden off that perch? Or
will Biden hold on and make a comeback in
South Carolina — or maybe even earlier?
Remember, Iowa is far from settled.

Could Sanders Sweep Iowa And

New Hampshire?

Nathaniel Rakich is FiveThirtyEight’s elections analyst. !

" @baseballot

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