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

CORALVILLE, Iowa — I drove into Iowa City yesterday too late to catch some of the higher-polling candidates’ final appearances in the area, such as Buttigieg’s rally in the neighboring town of Coralville, where he was endorsed by Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague. But I did stop by a local brewery, where Steyer was holding a town hall.

It was a gorgeous day — about 50 degrees and sunny, which in February is enough to make any Midwesterner feel giddy — and the brewery was packed, with supporters and curious caucusgoers spilling out onto the patio. The mood in the room was festive, although it probably didn’t hurt that the Steyer campaign was giving out free drink tickets. And Steyer, clad as always in his signature tartan tie, revved up the crowd with talk of impeachment, farm-to-table cooking in schools and a promise to throw the bums out of Washington.

Iowa is not an especially strong state for Steyer — he’s at just over 3 percent in our Iowa polling average. His chances are looking better in other early primary states like South Carolina, though, where he just picked up an endorsement from the co-chair of the state’s African American women’s caucus, which a supporter pointed out in a question-that-wasn’t-really-a-question after Steyer’s stump speech. One caucusgoer, Sally Peck, was still undecided but said she had started to pay attention to Steyer in a recent debate and was “very impressed” by his message and the event. “He’s strong, he doesn’t seem like he’s the kind of guy who can be bullied, and he tells it like he is,” Peck said. “The fact that he’s a success economically, with his own business — that could help him a lot too.”

But at the caucuses tonight, Steyer stalwarts are likely to find themselves being wooed by supporters of the front-runners, along with supporters of other low-polling candidates who are struggling to crack the 15 percent viability threshold. So as I talked to people at the event who were planning to caucus for Steyer, I asked them who their second choice would be. Not shockingly for a lefty college town, most were planning to throw their lot in with Warren or Sanders.

Megan and John Koch, a young couple who had brought their baby clad in a sparkly bow, told me they were supporting Steyer because of his emphasis on environmental issues. They hadn’t quite settled on a runner-up — but Megan was leaning toward Warren, while John said he’d probably support Sanders. “We’re both full-time college students working full time with a daughter, so education and health care are really important issues for both of us,” John said. “We’re just not quite on the same page about whether Sanders or Warren is best.”

Yeah, I think Sanders has had a pretty good few months, and certainly he has an opportunity to expand his coalition further … but, yeah it is worth remembering that he’s currently polling at only about half of the vote he got last time. To some extent, the story of the caucus is that no one came into tonight with more than about 20 percent support.

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.