Washington Post-Opinion: Why Iowa is so important this time

[Gothmog]

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The most underappreciated rule in the Democratic presidential primary race is the 15 percent threshold. To get any delegates from a congressional district in a caucus or primary, the candidate must win at least 15 percent of the vote. The same 15 percent threshold applies for at-large delegates.

Take the current RealClearPolitics poll average for Iowa. Only two candidates statewide clear the 15 percent threshold. Behind them, a candidate such as South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 11.3 percent might meet the threshold in some districts to qualify for delegates.....

What does this all mean? There may be very few candidate who get any delegates in Iowa. While a candidate such as Buttigieg or former congressman Beto O’Rourke might claim bragging rights for third place, he might not get delegates. Failure to get delegates wouldn’t necessarily doom candidates going into New Hampshire, but if the pattern repeats in New Hampshire, you’ll see lesser candidates dropping out....

Second, Sanders is languishing in a distant second place. It’s not unforeseeable that he could be passed by Buttigieg and/or Warren and denied delegates in one of the first two states. That would be disastrous for his campaign, maybe fatally so

[George II]

1. With all the competitors, it could turn out that only two or three candidates....

....may wind up with delegates, maybe even one in some states considering the 15% rule.

For example, in South Carolina Biden is up 46% to Sanders' 15% and Harris with 10%. If I interpret this correctly, only Biden and Sanders would get delegates. With Biden more than 3X Sanders, he'd get 75% of the delegates and Sanders only 25%. Is that correct?

If so, in Iowa with Biden at 35% and Sanders at 14%, Biden would get all the delegates (although in caucus states the calculation is slightly different)

Further, in New Hampshire the top three are Biden (36%), Sanders (18%), and Buttigieg 9%. So Biden would wind up with 66% of the delegates and Sanders 33%.

This could very easily be over by March 3, 2020 - Super Tuesday.

[NYMinute]

2. I see that happening

Sanders is languishing in a distant second place. It’s not unforeseeable that he could be passed by Buttigieg and/or Warren and denied delegates in one of the first two states. That would be disastrous for his campaign, maybe fatally so

More likely to happen than not.

[Gothmog]

4. You may be right on this prediction

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[honest.abe]

3. This benefits Biden in my opinion.

He will likely do well there which sets him up to run the table.

[LonePirate]

5. I am guessing at least 5-8 candidates will drop out after Iowa.

Hopefully, the deadline will not have passed for some of them to run for the Senate in their home states.

That being said, we need to move beyond exceptionally white states like Iowa and New Hampshire being our first states in the presidential primary contest.

[dsc]

6. People who support non viable candidates get to move to other candidates

so those who are close to the 15% get a second chance. Buttigieg might benefit from that if he is at the 13% or so that he currently is. Also the support for a candidate isn't uniform so one can get delegates with less than 15% total support if his or her support is higher than that in some areas but lower in others averaging out to the 13%