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

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.

Well here’s an early — and perhaps entirely predictable — indication of how high the turnout could be this evening