Poll: Buttigieg Busts Out in Iowa (and New Hampshire)

A future blog post will look at the issue of far left Democrats potentially causing Donald Trump to be re-elected because of their inability to push for more moderate proposals that can win the support of a majority of voters. It's a symptom of the out of control "purity" obsession of some far left Democrats who have lost sight on the need to win elections, even if the candidate best able to win doesn't meet all of the impossible - and impractical - purity tests.  Which brings me to the polls in New Hampshire and Iowa that both have Joe Biden in the lead even though he has yet to announce (and in my view, should not announce) and Pete Buttigieg in third position.  Of the far left candidates, only Bernie Sanders is in the top three.  The message to the far left should be that a far left agenda may not equate to winning the nomination.  A piece in Politico looks at the Iowa poll and possible takeaways.  Here are excerpts:

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads the 2020 Democratic presidential field in Iowa, according to a new poll released Thursday that also suggests Pete Buttigieg — a previously unknown, small-city mayor from Indiana — is gaining significant traction with likely caucus-goers.

The Monmouth University poll shows Biden, who hasn’t officially entered the race, is the first choice of roughly a quarter of likely caucusgoers, 27 percent. He’s followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with 16 percent and Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., with 9 percent.

That places Buttigieg marginally ahead of a handful of candidates who entered the race with more established profiles: Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are at 7 percent, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) is at 6 percent, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is at 4 percent and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is at 3 percent.

Buttigieg still lags most of the other major candidates in name recognition, the poll shows. Nearly a quarter of caucusgoers, 24 percent, say they haven’t heard of the mayor of the nation’s 301st-largest city, compared to 3 percent who haven’t heard of Warren, 7 percent who haven’t heard of O’Rourke, 10 percent for Harris and 11 percent for Booker. (Biden and Sanders have universal name-ID among Democrats.)

But Buttigieg has his fans: 45 percent of caucusgoers view him favorably, while 9 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him. The remaining 22 percent say they have heard of Buttigieg but don’t have an opinion of the 37-year-old candidate.

“Buttigieg’s current standing in the horse race is impressive given that nearly half of likely Democratic caucusgoers have yet to form an opinion of him,” said Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “He has one of the best positive to negative ratios in the field. He could move up if he is able to maintain that rating as he introduces himself to more voters.”

It’s the second early-state poll released Thursday showing Buttigieg surging into third place. A St. Anslem’s University poll in New Hampshire showed Buttigieg at 11 percent in that state’s first-in-the-nation primary.

[F]ully one-in-four caucusgoers, 26 percent, have an unfavorable opinion about Sanders, who finished a close second to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 caucuses, and 20 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Warren.

A POLITICO analysis finds that 14 candidates have qualified for the debate stage through polling, while Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has also said she has passed the donor threshold. If more than 20 candidates qualify through either method, a series of tiebreakers will determine the final lineup.

Wherever Buttigieg ends up, it has been remarkable to see an openly gay candidate do so well in these early stages of the nomination process.  Meanwhile, as a coming post will note, Buttigieg is making the Christofascists freak out and show their true ugly selves.