South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg has jumped an astounding 16 points to take the lead among Democrats in Iowa according to a new poll released Saturday.
The CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll counted likely Iowa caucus-goers, giving media and election-watchers some of the first numbers from those most likely to choose which 2020 Democratic contender will get Iowa’s votes at the Democratic National Convention — and it took everyone by surprise.
Fox News reports that the poll shows “Buttigieg with 25 percent support, a 16 percent increase over his numbers in the September version of the poll. Behind [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren (16 percent) came former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who each garnered 15 percent support.”
“Since September,” the Des Moines Register adds, “Buttigieg has risen 16 percentage points among Iowa’s likely Democratic caucusgoers, with 25% now saying he is their first choice for president. For the first time in the Register’s Iowa Poll, he bests rivals Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who are now clustered in competition for second place and about 10 percentage points behind the South Bend, Indiana, mayor.”
That’s bad news for Warren, particularly. Her support has tanked, falling six points from a similar poll in September, when she was surging to popularity and threatening Biden who, at the time, was widely considered the leader. Over the past several weeks, support for Warren has stagnated and then cratered, as she’s struggled to flesh out the details of her policy platform, and has refused to say whether her “Medicare for All” plan would involve an across-the-board tax increase.
The poll also appears to show that far-left Democrats, once convinced that Warren was their best shot at a national candidate, are abandoning her to return to Bernie Sanders, who inched up four percentage points since the last poll, taken just as Warren was gaining momentum.
The best news, though, is for Buttigieg, who has been an also-ran candidate since entering the race for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year. The South Bend major, who once touted progressive policy ideas on the trail, has re-tailored his campaign’s messaging in recent weeks to seem more “moderate” in the face of polls that show a moderate message resonating with possible Democrat voters in “red” and “battleground” states.
Buttigieg has also focused his efforts to snag the nomination on Iowa, putting more than 100 staffers in 30 offices across the state, mostly in areas that have grown in population since the 2012 and 2016 election cycles, according to the Guardian.
“We’ve built an organization in Iowa that is capable of capturing this momentum and converting it to committed caucus-goers to knock on doors, host house meetings, and win the Iowa caucuses for Pete,” his campaign director told the left-leaning UK newspaper just this week.
It’s a winning strategy for the Indiana mayor whose resume is thin when compared to his top competitors. This is the second such poll to show Buttigieg in the lead in less than a week. The first, a Monmouth poll out Tuesday, gave Buttigieg a three-point edge over his closest competitor, former Vice President Joe Biden.