On Sun­day, Emer­son Polling released a poll of like­ly Iowa cau­cus­go­ers, show­ing a large jump in sup­port for Pete Buttigieg, the May­or of South Bend, Indi­ana. The poll – con­duct­ed over the week­end – showed 11% sup­port for Buttigieg, putting him in third place behind Joe Biden (25%) and Bernie Sanders (24%).

In Jan­u­ary, the last time Emer­son polled this group, Buttigieg had 0%. On< March 10th, Buttigieg gained nation­al promi­nence after going viral for blast­ing his fel­low Indi­anan, Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence dur­ing a CNN-host­ed town hall.

Pete Buttigieg cam­paigns in Mer­ri­mack, New Hamp­shire (Pho­to:
Marc Nozell, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

In the days after the event, he received hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in dona­tions to his cam­paign, almost swamp­ing the small team he assem­bled for his run. Buttigieg has already exceed­ed 65,000 indi­vid­ual donors, one of the entry thresh­olds to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic debates.

“May­or Pete,” as he is known to his South Bend con­stituents (the dif­fi­cult-to-pro­nounce name, “Buttigieg” is native to his father’s home, the tiny Mediter­ranean island of Mal­ta) is in many ways an extra­or­di­nary can­di­date.

If he were to win the pres­i­den­cy, he would be the youngest-ever com­man­der-in-chief at thir­ty-nine years (as of the 2021 inau­gu­ra­tion, beat­ing JFK by four years), the first open­ly gay pres­i­dent, and the first vet­er­an of the war in Afghanistan to be pres­i­dent. Buttigieg is also a Har­vard grad­u­ate, a Rhodes schol­ar, flu­ent in mul­ti­ple lan­guages includ­ing Ara­bic and Nor­we­gian, and appar­ent­ly a tal­ent­ed pianist.

Emerson’s poll was not a poll of all vot­ers in the Unit­ed States or even Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers, but focused specif­i­cal­ly on peo­ple like­ly to take part in the Iowa Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cau­cus. Iowa will be the first state to hold a nom­i­nat­ing event next year.

Iowa is one of the whitest states in the nation, mak­ing it very unrep­re­sen­ta­tive of the increas­ing­ly diverse Demo­c­ra­t­ic base. Its loca­tion in the Mid­west may give Buttigieg – a may­or from Indi­ana – a slight advan­tage over oth­er candidates.

Pro­po­nents of cau­cus­es argue that they help lev­el the play­ing field by allow­ing less­er known insur­gent or “dark horse” can­di­dates an oppor­tu­ni­ty to break through. This school of thought holds that where­as pri­maries can be won with orga­nized mon­ey, win­ning a cau­cus requires orga­niz­ing people.

Com­pared to a pri­ma­ry, Iowa’s cau­cus sys­tem is extreme­ly complicated.

Buttigieg’s per­for­mance in the CNN town hall dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed the opin­ions of polit­i­cal­ly engaged peo­ple. While his pop­u­lar­i­ty shot up among pos­si­ble Iowa cau­cus­go­ers after the town hall, he did­n’t see a cor­re­spond­ing bump in a poll by CNN of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers nation­wide (only 1% sup­port­ed Buttigieg).

How­ev­er, it’s still ear­ly. The Iowa cau­cus­es are a lit­tle more than ten months away.

That gives the affa­ble May­or Pete a lot of time to become famil­iar to the broad­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. While a lot of vot­ers may not know who the South Bend May­or is, he’s charis­mat­ic and has made a favor­able impres­sion with many com­men­ta­tors. That is like­ly to give him access to a larg­er audi­ence through mass media.

For­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Beto O’Rourke has already shown what can be achieved with a savvy social media strat­e­gy; with­in one day of announc­ing his can­di­da­cy, he had amassed more dona­tions than even Bernie Sanders.

May­or Pete shares many traits with Beto O’Rourke.

Both are among the youngest Democ­rats in the field; both have been not­ed for their good looks; both hail from states that Democ­rats have strug­gled in recent­ly; both have gone viral for impas­sioned speech­es decry­ing Trump; and both are known by nick­names their con­stituents gave them (‘Beto’ is a Span­ish diminu­tive for O’Rourke’s giv­en name, Robert).

How­ev­er, it remains to be seen if either O’Rourle or Buttigieg, or any oth­er can­di­date for that mat­ter, can seri­ous­ly com­pete with the two strongest, best-known can­di­dates in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic field – Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.(Biden has not announced, but there’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty he will soon.)