Iowa Caucuses Thread

If Bernie sweeps the first 3 states the Democratic Party is going to have an absolute ****ing meltdown.

 

I think you meant the Iowa Caucasians.

 

I think each time Bernie wins an early state, the next state will be a little bit harder as the anti-Bernie vote (Biden/Pete/Amy/Bloomberg/etc) will coalesce into one candidate. The same applies with Biden though, as the Bernie/Warren vote will coalesce. Bernie's best chance is multiple people in the first group keep running as long as possible, and Biden's best chance is to keep Warren in the race. It's sort of the Trump strategy for both of them - keep winning with 30-40% until you become inevitable.

 

No the Democratic party will not, they will get behind him unlike the Bernie bros.

 

It'll be fascinating to see the difference between the initial vote totals and final ones (first time they will be released this year). There's a scenario where Bernie's supporters are going to be livid - if he wins the initial ballot, but then Biden wins in a lot of places where Amy/Pete are non-viable and have to switch their support. Warren seems like she'd be viable all over the place, so Bernie may get less of a boost in that 2nd round.

That said, the polls are very clearly trending, and Bernie tends to do well in caucuses due to the hardcore nature of his supporters, so it seems like it's certainly trending towards a solid win for him. Biden needs to hold on to 2nd, and kind of needs Warren in 3rd to keep Pete/Amy from gaining momentum.

 

Imagine if the president race is done this way.... effectively bunch of spoilers early on. More reasons why I want to see rank voting.

 

I am actually surprised Bernie is not running away with Iowa and NH, he should have them locked up like Biden has SC.

The fact that Biden is leading in any poll should be worrisome for Bernie.

 

Agree that them staying in the race helps Bernie. But I don't think any of them except Amy can justify dropping out until South Carolina. Pete had (as of a couple of weeks ago) an outside chance of winning Iowa and NH, and his supporters deserve a chance to vote for him. If he finishes 3rd in both, he should be gone though. Steyer is oddly doing well in Nevada and South Carolina, so he probably wants to stay in through those. Bloomberg is all about Super Tuesday, though if Biden is on the ropes, he's going to have a difficult decision to make. Amy is tricky because she has to stay in through Iowa since she staked her whole campaign on it, but even a 4th place finish just seems to leave her as a spoiler going forward. She probably is the one to drop out after Iowa if she finishes 4th/5th, even though I'd agree that theoretically she is the strongest Biden-alternative.

 

I think you are right that Bernie's fast start will system shock the Democratic field and cause the decline of candidates like Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar. The question is will the culling of the moderates be strong and fast enough.

The Warren/Sanders alliance theory has a problem, however, in that survey after survey keep showing their bases of support do not significantly overlap. Add in the recent bad blood between them and you have an even bigger circle left to square.

When the Warren campaign comes to its merciful end, it won't throw its support behind Bernie, and her voters largely won't either. Warren supporters back moderates over change candidates as their 2nd choice at a 2 to 1 ratio.

Bernie's strongest 2nd choice supporters are overwhelmingly the Yang and Gabbard constituency, neither of which do I expect to exit the race before the convention. This will open the window for the moderates to seize a majority from Bernie, but they have to get their **** together and decide on a candidate before it is too late (ideally before Super Tuesday). The coalescing will be difficult because nobody is particularly happy with the current portfolio of moderates (of which there are many if you include Bloomberg).

 

Buttigieg is going to show strong in Iowa and decently in New Hampshire.

He is going to show poorly in Nevada and get absolutely BTFO in South Carolina.

At this point he will have an opportunity to bow out gracefully before Super Tuesday. He won't take it. He will go into Super Tuesday hoping for a turnaround and get roflstomped. Then he'll drop.

 

I agree - but I don't think he's playing for 3rd or 4th. That might be the likely outcome now, but as of 2 weeks ago, he was in 1st in both of those. And his whole campaign was centered around those two states. If he wins both, who knows what the endgame would have been. That's clearly not going to happen now, but it would be horrible for his supporters and volunteers to have them work so hard and then drop out a week before the first votes.

 

https://www.predictit.org/

Here's a way to legally gamble on the outcome. You're welcome. I invested $80 in Amy Klobuchar stock and I stand to gain roughly $1,500 if she wins

 

https://www.predictit.org/markets/d...n-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination

Yang just jumped Buttigieg and Warren. Lol.

Christ look at Bloomberg.

 

How on Earth is Hillary trading at 4 cents? She has not been on the radar until today

 

FWIW, these markets are really inefficient - largely because of an $850 limit on risk in each market, plus they take high commissions (10% of profit) and withdrawal fees (5% if I remember right). But there's a lot of "small" easy money to be made - Yang has been as high as $0.10 at times, which is basically a free return on money. If you had just bet against each candidate when they "surge", you could basically end up with "No"s on all of them and make a profit no matter who wins.

 

Yang Gang with 0% votes? Yall too funny CF.