MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Pete Buttigieg needed to win big in the Iowa caucuses. And he did.
Final results released Thursday show Buttigieg in first place in state delegate equivalents, the traditional way of winning delegates and the Iowa caucuses, with less than one-tenth of a percent lead over Bernie Sanders.
The Vermont senator, 78, also claims victory based on the popular vote, and inconsistencies cast doubt on the final results. But one thing is certain: Buttigieg outperformed expectations and demonstrated the strength of his organizing team.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 70, finished in third place, and former Vice President Joe Biden, 77, was in fourth.
Buttigieg, 38, a newcomer to the national political stage, skyrocketed to stardom last year after he announced his presidential ambitions due in part to extensive media coverage highlighting his unique characteristics: a Midwestern millennial with executive experience, a Navy Reserve Afghanistan veteran, a Harvard graduate, a Rhodes Scholar, and a married gay man.
But as Buttigieg has spent the last few days touting his victory — “By all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious,” he said Monday night when no precincts had been reported — the pressure has never been higher for his campaign.
The former mayor and his campaign acknowledged that a lackluster result in Iowa would be detrimental for his White House hopes. Falling behind in the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary would have the same effect, chalking up his Iowa success to an outlier and a result of Biden’s ineffective organization rather than his strength as a candidate.
Buttigieg acknowledged the urgency of the moment in a call with supporters on Wednesday evening.
“If Iowa was our first chance to show that we have the ability to win, New Hampshire is the place where we demonstrate that we have sustained momentum. It’s our chance to prove that we’re in this race for the long haul,” Buttigieg said, before asking those on the call to chip in a donation. “We’re still the underdog in this effort.”
National primary polls conducted before the caucuses show Buttigieg in single digits nationally. For many voters, while Buttigieg sparks their interest, he simply does not have the national experience they want in a nominee. Concerns about his ability to appeal to minority voters reached Iowans, who asked him about the issue.
Following his shock Iowa failure, Biden awoke to the threat of Buttigieg capturing voters who might otherwise vote for him and directly attacked the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor on Wednesday.
“It’s a risk, to be just straight up with you, for this party to nominate someone who’ve never held an office higher than mayor of a town of 100,000 people in Indiana,” Biden said.
Buttigieg’s post-Iowa path is further complicated by the Iowa Democratic Party’s disastrous result-reporting mishaps.
Because of the delay, he was denied an immediate boost in attention from Iowa results before the news cycle turned to President Trump’s State of the Union speech and acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial.
Sanders’s own claim to victory further muddles consensus about the ultimate winner and stunts Buttigieg’s momentum. In a press conference declaring his own victory on Thursday, Sanders said that the final state delegate equivalent count “is meaningless because we are both likely to receive the same number of national delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.”
“When 6,000 more people come out for you in an election than your nearest opponent, we here in northern New England call that a victory,” Sanders said, referencing his lead over Buttigieg in Iowa’s first alignment vote.
Even if he does well in the New Hampshire primary, he will be tested in the Feb. 22 Nevada and Feb. 29 South Carolina contests, which have a higher proportion of minority voters. Issues that have followed Buttigieg through his bid are likely to keep haunting him.
Rival operatives and journalists will likely continue to dig into Buttigieg’s record with the minority community in South Bend, such as the killing of a black man last summer, and Buttigieg’s firing of a black police chief who was involved in a scandal about illegally recorded conversations. And despite being the youngest candidate in the race, Buttigieg does not have outsize support among younger voters — with some even making fun of him for being too vanilla and not proposing bold enough ideas.
