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

As Amelia mentioned earlier, the impeachment angle of this is interesting. Buttigieg may have benefited, but Biden had the same opportunity — he wasn’t trapped in D.C. and had a similar number of field offices, 28 compared to Buttigieg’s 33. If candidate travel and organization made the difference at the end for Buttigieg, it makes Biden’s apparent underperformance look worse.

The second-choice data suggests that Buttigieg and Warren gained the most in the realignment phase of the caucuses, which fits with how they have run — both have tried to appeal to all people in the party and offer themselves as consensus choices.

The polling in Iowa, which should be judged by first preferences, was actually quite good. Especially the spiked Selzer & Co. poll!