A combination of early state and national polls provide mounting evidence that Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has begun to stall in the 2020 Democratic race, while South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is soaring.
When Monmouth University released a poll on Tuesday showing Buttigieg overtaking Warren in Iowa, it raised eyebrows. Taken alone, it could have been dismissed, but it follows a Quinnipiac University poll from last week that showed them virtually tied in the state. Just a few weeks ago, Warren was emerging as a front-runner in the state, which is the first contest of the election cycle.
Something similar has happened in New Hampshire, where she has receded relative to polls taken in early October. The most recent poll taken in the state, released Monday by Quinnipiac, had Warren in a virtual three-way tie for second place with Buttigieg and Sanders.
There are too many moving parts in a complex primary, but looking at national polls, which we have more of, shows that Warren peaked on Oct. 9 in the RealClearPolitics average, at 26.8%, when she was considered tied as front-runner with Biden. Yet now she’s at 20.8%, closer to third place Sanders (17%) than she is to Biden (26.8%). The Buttigieg surge that has been detected in Iowa and New Hampshire has not yet been reflected in the national polling average, where he’s still at 7.5 points.
During the Oct. 15 debate, Warren came under serious fire from her rivals, including Buttigieg, for her implausible claim that she was going to give free healthcare to everybody without raising taxes on the middle class. Her subsequent “plan” to prove that she could was wildly unrealistic.
In the early states, the polling has been less frequent than it has nationally, so it’s trickier to detect trends. The data we do have, however, show Warren went from polling in the low 20s in Iowa to retreating to the high teens. Buttigieg, meanwhile, has surged from the low teens to the high teens and low 20s. That’s why I feel safer saying she’s stalling (as opposed to collapsing) while Buttigieg is clearly surging.
Biden has lost a bit, too, but his big fall in Iowa already came in September, so it’s less noticeable. But one important thing to point out is that he’s less dependent on winning Iowa than other candidates.
So, for instance, if the final result of Iowa is similar to the one in Tuesday’s Monmouth poll (Buttigieg 22, Biden 19, Warren 18), Biden would have to be happy with the result. As I noted the other day, Biden is struggling in Iowa and New Hampshire relative to his national performance, but he has a commanding lead in South Carolina, where he’s much more popular among black voters. Warren has received tepid support among this voting bloc and Buttigieg’s support among the group has been virtually nonexistent in polls. The pair has more to lose in Iowa than Biden does.
