Harry Enten on CNN's New Day dug into the numbers we do know from Iowa.
"Tell us who showed up," John Berman asked.
Enten said there was a real question going in about whether those under the age of 45 who support Bernie Sanders in large numbers "would make up a larger portion of the electorate than they did in 2016."
"What did the entrance poll show? There was that jump in that under the age of the under 45 vote and that's very, very important for Bernie Sanders, especially going forward if that's something we continue seeing. However, if you also look at the ideological breakdown, liberals versus moderates to conservatives, that looks the same exact as it did in 2016," Enten said.
"That's a bad sign for Bernie Sanders. so when you take those two things into account, right, that there were more younger people but there were just as many liberals that came out to caucus last night, that's good news for Bernie Sanders and bad news for Bernie Sanders. It's particularly bad news, though, for Joe Biden, who really needed those older voters who make up a larger portion of the electorate."
"So in terms of news for the Democratic party writ large, the turnout was not particularly high," Berman noted.
"No, it wasn't particularly high. If you go back to four years ago, what the Iowa Democratic party has said, it's about the same exact turnout. It's not as strong as in 2008. There's supposed to be all this excitement around the Democratic party wanting to beat Donald Trump and this isn't the only data point that shows that. If we look at the special elections that we've seen so far in 2019 and 2020, and compare it to the 2016 baseline, what we see is that Democrats are overperforming at a lower level than between 2017 and 2018. So when you take those two data points and put them together, maybe there's a little bit of an enthusiasm problem for Democrats going forward," Enten said.
The enthusiasm problem is probably due to the fact that we haven't yet coalesced around a candidate. I don't anticipate a problem in the general election.
