Bernie Sanders is right: The Iowa Democratic caucuses were a “virtual tie,”
especially after you consider that the results aren’t even actual vote
tallies, but state delegate equivalents subject to all kinds of messy
rounding rules and potential geographic biases.
The official tally, for now, is Hillary Clinton at 49.9 percent, and Mr. Sanders at 49.6 percent with 97 percent of precincts reporting early Tuesday morning.
But
in the end, a virtual tie in Iowa is an acceptable, if not ideal,
result for Mrs. Clinton and an ominous one for Mr. Sanders. He failed to
win a state tailor made to his strengths.
He
fares best among white voters. The electorate was 91 percent white, per
the entrance polls. He does well with less affluent voters. The caucus
electorate was far less affluent than the national primary electorate in
2008. He’s heavily dependent on turnout from young voters, and he had
months to build a robust field operation. As the primaries quickly
unfold, he won’t have that luxury.
Iowa
is not just a white state, but also a relatively liberal one — one of
only a few of states where Barack Obama won white voters in the 2008
primary and in both general elections. It is also a caucus state, which
tends to attract committed activists.
In
the end, Mr. Sanders made good on all of those strengths. He excelled
in college towns. According to the entrance polls, he won an astonishing
84 percent of those 17 to 29 (17-year-olds can caucus in Iowa if
they’re 18 by the general election) — even better than Mr. Obama in the
2008 caucus. He won voters making less than $50,000 a year, again
outperforming Mr. Obama by a wide margin. He won “very liberal” voters
comfortably, 58 to 39 percent.
But
these strengths were neatly canceled by Mrs. Clinton’s strengths. She
won older voters, more affluent voters, along with “somewhat liberal”
and “moderate” Democrats.
This
raises a straightforward challenge for Mr. Sanders. He has nearly no
chance to do as well among nonwhite voters as Mr. Obama did in 2008. To
win, Mr. Sanders will need to secure white voters by at least a modest
margin and probably a large one. In the end, Mr. Sanders failed to score
a clear win in a state where Mr. Obama easily defeated Mrs. Clinton
among white voters.
Mr.
Sanders’s strength wasn’t so great as to suggest that he’s positioned
to improve upon national polls once the campaign heats up. National
polls show him roughly tied with Mrs. Clinton among white voters, and it
was the case here as well. It suggests that additional gains for Mr.
Sanders in national polls will require him to do better than he did in
Iowa, not that the close race in Iowa augurs a close one nationally.
Mr.
Sanders will have another opportunity to gain momentum after the New
Hampshire primary. He might not get as much credit for a victory there
as he would have in Iowa, since New Hampshire borders his home state of
Vermont. But it could nonetheless give him another opportunity to
overcome his weaknesses among nonwhite voters.
As
a general rule, though, momentum is overrated in primary politics. In
2008, for instance, momentum never really changed the contours of the
race. Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa allowed him to make huge gains among
black voters, but not much more — the sort of exception that would seem
to prove the rule. Mr. Obama couldn’t even put Mrs. Clinton away after
winning a string of states in early February.
There’s
an even longer list of candidates with fairly limited appeal,
particularly Republicans like Rick Santorum, Pat Buchanan or Mike
Huckabee, who failed to turn early-state victories into broader
coalitions.
The
polls this year offer additional reasons to doubt it. Mrs. Clinton
holds more than 50 percent of the vote in national surveys; her share of
the vote never declined in 2008. The polls say that her supporters are
more likely to be firmly decided than Mr. Sanders’s voters.
Back-to-back
wins in Iowa and New Hampshire by Mr. Sanders might have been enough to
overcome that history. The no-decision in Iowa ensures we won’t find
out.
source newyork post
