Buttigieg surges into lead in Iowa poll; Warren, Biden, Sanders tied for 2nd

Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou Bloomberg News | Unknown

Pete Buttigieg has surged into the lead in Iowa, surpassing Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren by a large margin in the state that holds the first presidential nominating contest, according to an influential poll released Saturday.

Buttigieg has the support of 25% of likely participants in the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses, up 16 percentage points from September, the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll showed. Warren, Biden and Bernie Sanders were in a statistical tie for second place. Warren had 16%, down 6 points from September. Biden and Sanders came in at 15%.

Amy Klobuchar polled at 6%, while Cory Booker and Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang polled at 3%. All other candidates polled at 1% or less.

Buttigieg’s rise comes after a solid performance earlier this month at the Liberty and Justice Dinner in Des Moines, where he had one of the largest groups of supporters in the crowd. He has one of the biggest staffs in Iowa, with more than 100 organizers.

The poll was “extremely encouraging,” Buttigieg said in Long Beach, California, where he attended a state Democratic Party forum. There’s still work to be done “to consolidate our gains and to make sure that I am earning every vote as we head into the caucuses and the primary,” he said.

The poll of 500 likely Democratic caucus goers has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points and was conducted by Selzer & Co. from Nov. 8-13.