What Did — And Didn’t — Go Down In The Iowa Caucuses

In my panel survey, there are 454 Democrats who reported their primary preference in 2016 and again last week. In 2016, 33 percent were with Bernie. He’s now got 15 percent of that group, and 64 percent of his supporters now were with him in 2016. It’s an obvious point, but Sanders will lose support from 2016 — the question is just how much.

In a multi-candidate race, Sanders just needs to consolidate support from caucusgoers who already supported him (as well as new younger caucusgoers). But most polls had him retaining a bit less than half of his prior supporters and converting almost no former Clinton supporters. So an electorate of 56% 2016 Clinton supporters and 31% 2016 Sanders supporters would require him to end with a larger share of former supporters than polls suggested. On the bright side for Sanders, Clinton-supporting caucusgoers have been distributed across four other candidates.

Voters in a primary tend to be pretty open-minded. They might like a few candidates, even if they’ve decided to vote, or caucus, for one in particular. That’s in part why you see bounces in primary polling, as voters who were supporting another candidate hop onto a different candidate’s bandwagon. Indeed, if one candidate sweeps a few early states, he or she could see a surge of support as primary season proceeds. But to get that bounce, it helps to be well-liked among likely voters in the first place. See which candidates are most popular, and who has had the biggest jump in net favorability since last year.