Senator Sanders and Mayor Pete left Iowa with a virtual tie after controversy surrounding delayed election results. Normally the winner of the Iowa Caucus gets a boost going into New Hampshire. But with the election results trickling in slowly throughout the week and a virtual tie for Mayor Pete and Senator Sanders it remained to be seen if this would be the case.
In Iowa Mayor Pete proved that he could compete for the nomination and has real momentum, finishing in the top 2 in the first two states. With the next two states, Nevada and South Carolina, being much more diverse and Pete having incredibly low support among minorities his team will look more towards competing on Super Tuesday. So far Pete has emerged as the favorite among moderates after Vice President Biden fell to a 5th place finish in New Hampshire. We’ll have to see if he can bounce back in South Carolina where he has previously had very high support. Or if his poor finishes in the first two states have hurt his potential for the next states.
Senator Klobuchar came out with an impressive 3rd place finish in New Hampshire, rebounding well after finishing 4th in Iowa. On the moderate wing of the party it seems she’ll be the much stronger challenger to Mayor Pete than Biden will be. However, it will be tough for her to compete with him as she does not have a large infrastructure or staff already in place in the upcoming states. It could be a repeat of Paul Tsongas defeating Bill Clinton in the 1992 New Hampshire primary. Tsongas was able to pull off the upset in New Hampshire but was entirely unprepared to compete in later states.
Senator Warren will also have an uphill battle with two unimpressive showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. Many in the media have been counting her out after finishing 3rd and 4th respectively. But she figures to do well in the next two states, and many were counting out Amy before her 3rd place finish in New Hampshire.
Bernie appears to be the front runner and prospective nominee heading into Nevada, especially heading towards Super Tuesday he seems to be the candidate to beat. Biden has finally relinquished the role of front runner that he has held since before announcing his candidacy. His campaign has looked very weak, and a very distraught Biden chose to leave New Hampshire early on election night in hopes of a more favorable crowd in South Carolina.
New Hampshire was also the final stop on the campaign trail for candidates choosing to drop out either just before or right after the primary. Four candidates dropped out of the race in the month before the primary with Andrew Yang, Michael Bennett and Deval Patrick all choosing to leave immediately following New Hampshire.
Just as many candidates are leaving the race, we have reached the moment where one is on the cusp of entering the race.
Former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg announced his candidacy back in November but has yet to appear on a ballot or a primary stage. That is about to change as he is set to be in the next debate tonight in Las Vegas. Bloomberg’s strategy has been to place all of his efforts on Super Tuesday along with spending hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money buying up media in an attempt to win the nomination. It will be interesting to see how well he does in upcoming states with all of the media attention he has been getting.
The next contests held will be the Nevada Caucus on February 22nd and the South Carolina Primary a week later on the 29th. Super Tuesday with 14 states and 1 territory voting will take place on March 3rd. Super Tuesday will have more than 1,300 delegates at stake on one day, with the outcome playing a major role in deciding who will be the nominee.
