Could 2020 see 4 winners in the first four states?
With less than 60 days before the first votes are counted in Iowa, four candidates are in the mix or leading in at least one of the four early-voting states.
Combined with the lack of a dominant front-runner nationally, Democrats can start asking a question that’s maybe not so far-fetched: Could the first four contests leave us with four different winners?
It would mean perhaps the most wide-open Democratic primary in a generation heading into Super Tuesday on March 3.
“I think there’s a strong chance – not an insignificant chance – of that happening,” John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, said of four candidates splitting the vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
The quartet of former Vice President Joe Biden; South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren has led the pack for months, with each having topped polls in one or more of the early states. At times, each of them has led a poll in at least one of the early states, while Biden has led most national polls.
Sanders and Warren appeal to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, while Biden and Buttigieg have staked out a more center-left ideology. Each is well-financed for the long haul.
“That is reflective, honestly, of where essentially every cohort of the (Democratic) electorate is,” Della Volpe said. “There’s a consensus on what the goals are. There’s a consensus on the challenges that America’s facing. But there’s not yet a consensus, whether it’s with older voters or younger voters, of what the right pathway is to achieve those goals and challenges.”
If each candidate carried one early state, it would challenge long-held conventional political wisdom – that a candidate needs to win Iowa or New Hampshire to gain momentum before the race nationalizes.
One latecomer to the race has made that bet already. Billionaire and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is banking on the race’s continued fluidity as he skips campaigning in the first four states to focus on Super Tuesday, when voters in 11 states including California go to the polls.
The four states-four winners scenario isn’t hard to draw up – although doing so lacks the foresight of momentum shifts and twists and turns that could alter the race in the weeks to come. Other candidates also could take off as the races inches toward Iowa.
But a four winners in four states scenario would likely require Buttigieg winning Iowa, which holds its caucuses Feb. 3.
Buttigieg has soared into first in the two of three most recent polls, holding a lead of 3 percentage points from his closest rival, according to the most recent Real Clear Politics average of polls. A new poll released last week from Emerson College has Biden first, Sanders second and Buttigieg third.
In New Hampshire, which votes Feb. 11, a close four-way race has held for weeks, with Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren each leading in at least one of the six most recent polls.
Sanders is ahead currently in New Hampshire by 1.3 percentage points in the latest Real Clear Politics average of polls, while Warren has slipped. But New Hampshire has a history in primaries of bucking Iowa, often favoring candidates from New England, perhaps giving an advantage to Sanders or Warren.
Next comes the Feb. 22 caucus in Nevada where Biden is ahead by only 6 to 10 percentage points, according to recent polls. Warren and Sanders – the latter of whom finished close behind Clinton in Nevada in 2016 – are both in striking distance.
One week later, Feb. 29, is the South Carolina primary, where Biden, who remains the only candidate with sizable support among black voters, has dominated from Day 1. As long as Biden continues to have sizable support among African Americans, who make up more than half of the Democratic electorate there, he will be a heavy favorite in South Carolina.