What Went Down In The 2020 Nevada Caucuses

Sanders seems to be doing better with nonwhite voters, which suggests some of his campaign’s choices may be paying off. They have more prominent black surrogates than 2016, a very intentional strategy of organizing Latino voters, a campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, who is Muslim and Pakistani. Both Sanders and Warren seem to have gone to school on the weaknesses of prior left-wing Democratic candidates (like Howard Dean in 2004 and Sanders in 2016) and tried to adjust for that. I also think that the electorate is changing in ways that are helping Sanders — my guess is that when this primary is over, we will learn that black and Latino voters under 45 voted much differently than those over 45.

Micah, if Iowa holds a caucus but it’s just a beauty contest — i.e., not worth any delegates — does it count for the purposes of your over/under??

The thing with Iowa is, the GOP sounds inclined to have its caucuses again. Even if the DNC hands down delegate penalties to Iowa for refusing to change its method or something, Democrats may choose to just hold their caucuses anyway. There will be so much media coverage of Iowa on the GOP side that the Democratic contest will get a ton of attention even if it doesn’t affect delegates because of national party penalties.