Most people won’t want to believe this – even some dejected Biden fans – but it’s true. Iowa isn’t demographically representative. If Joe Biden remains atop the national polling averages in the primary race, he remains the frontrunner. If he dominates South Carolina, he’s probably the nominee.

Bill Clinton got just 3% of the vote in the Iowa caucus. Three percent! He did fairly poorly in New Hampshire as well. He went on to win the nomination anyway. The media painted it as an improbable “comeback.” In reality it was simply because Iowa doesn’t tell us much about how the rest of the states are going to vote.

Why is South Carolina informative? Black voter turnout in the state is indicative of black voter turnout on Super Tuesday, which is where the nominee is chosen. South Carolina is also roughly indicative of eventual black voter turnout in swing states in the general election.

Pete Buttigieg massively outperformed his poll numbers in Iowa. Will that also be the case in South Carolina? Or was the Iowa thing more of a fluke of the wacky and semi-random nature of caucus results? We’ll see. But Joe Biden isn’t actually “in trouble” unless he loses his lead in the national polling averages, or he does poorly in South Carolina.