What Went Down In The 2020 Nevada Caucuses

Piggybacking off Nate’s point to answer Geoffrey’s question: I wonder if Biden simply doesn’t have a good picture of the results. His ground game in Nevada was much smaller than Buttigieg’s, based on the number of field offices each candidate had. (Biden had five, Buttigieg had 11.)

The thing about those Buttigieg claims though is that there’s likely a lot of selection bias in where they have precinct captains feeding results to them. That is, Buttigieg is presumably more likely to have precinct captains in places that are strong Buttigieg precincts.

You wonder why the Biden team isn’t making claims to second place even though most of the numbers we’ve seen seem slightly better for him than for Buttigieg. Perhaps because the two candidates have different expectations to play to.