Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders emerged strongest from Iowa, but it was Pete who bore the brunt of his Democratic rivals’ attacks.

Buttigieg struggled with an answer to a question about South Bend’s record of racial disparities in drug-related arrests during his eight years as mayor.

His rivals didn’t let up, and there’s a key strategic reason for that: Buttigieg is supremely weak among African-Americans.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg left Iowa with a delegate lead and a target on their backs. Though Sanders has spent the better part of this primary with a significant number of rivals coming after his record, Buttigieg has only recently been feeling the heat.

In the New Hampshire debate, a key moment emerged when the mayor was pressed on his record in South Bend by moderator Linsey Davis, who asked the mayor, bluntly, about South Bend’s record of racial disparities in drug-related arrests during his eight years in office.

Buttigieg attempts to explain the increase in black arrests in South Bend under his leadership for marijuana possession. ABC's Linsey Davis: "Sen. Warren, is that a substantial answer from Mayor Buttigieg?"

Warren: "No." pic.twitter.com/iesdxQTXK3 — Axios (@axios) February 8, 2020

After Pete provided an answer, Davis asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren if she thought it was sufficient.

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“No,” she replied.

Other members of the field then laid out their racial justice policies and took swipes at Buttigieg’s response. The reason for the sustaine attack is simple: This is a tough spot for Pete, and while it might not be a big deal in New Hampshire, come Nevada, South Carolina, and on Super Tuesday, it’s going to be colossal.

In short, Buttigiegs numbers among African Americans are terrible.

For over a year, Insider has been conducting a series of SurveyMonkey Audience polls to gauge Americans’ opinions on 2020 Democratic primary. You can download every poll here, down to the individual respondent data. (Read more about how the Insider Democratic primary tracker works here).

Foto: sourceBusiness Insider

The first red flag comes when you look at the percentage of Democrats who would be satisfied in the event Buttigieg becomes the nominee, and comparing it to the percentage of Black Democrats who would be satisfied. Based on this graphic, which aggregates all the polls conducted in the back half of 2019, things are really bad for Pete.

Foto: sourceRuobing Su/Business Insider

Just 27% of Black Democrats would be satisfied with Buttigieg as nominee. That is 23 percentage points less than his support overall among all Democrats. No other Democrat underperforms so badly among any racial or ethnic group in all of the Democratic party.

Things have only gotten worse for Pete in the time since. Looking at the polls conducted in December and January alone, 47% of Democrats would be satisfied with Buttigieg as nominee, but looking solely at black respondents, that’s a paltry 21%. That’s a drop of 26 percentage points compared to Democrats overall who know of Buttigieg.

Pete Buttigieg does 30 percentage points worse among black people than white people when it comes to satisfaction as nominee, and that’s a huge issue for him moving forward.

Fifteen minutes on national television isn’t going to help that. Large, diverse state are on the horizon. If there’s something that’s going to foul up the Buttigieg campaign, it’s going to be happen in one of those places, and attacks like the ones that landed tonight certainly aren’t going to help.