Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and her campaign are brushing off her poor performance in the first two primary contests in the nation, asserting that the race remains unpredictable and adding that no candidate has “come close yet to receiving majority support among the Democratic primary electorate.”
Warren failed to reach the required 15 percent threshold to receive delegates in New Hampshire, coming in fourth place with 9.2 percent support.
On Tuesday, with the New Hampshire primary underway, her campaign manager Roger Lau wrote a memo brushing off the presidential hopeful’s lackluster performance in Iowa and contending that it is too early in the race to make assumptions or predictions.
“No candidate has come close yet to receiving majority support among the Democratic primary electorate, and there is no candidate that has yet shown the ability to consolidate support,” Roger Lau wrote in a memo titled “A Look Ahead” on Tuesday.
He continued:
People who are predicting what will happen a week from now are the same people who a year ago predicted that Beto O’Rourke was a frontrunner for the nomination. Barely over a week ago, a fifth place finish in Iowa was seen likely to knock Amy Klobuchar out of the race, and much of the media and pundit class predicted Pete Buttigieg’s fade in the Iowa caucuses.
“As we’ve seen in the last week, debates and unexpected results have an outsize impact on the race, and will likely keep it volatile and unpredictable through Super Tuesday,” Lau added, noting that Warren’s campaign expects the primary to be a “drawn-out contest to accumulate delegates everywhere.”
He added:
After New Hampshire tonight, 98% of pledged delegates will still be up for grabs. And as the race consolidates after Super Tuesday, we expect the results to show that Elizabeth Warren is the consensus choice of the widest coalition of Democrats in every corner of the country.
Warren repeated her campaign manager’s sentiment in the speech delivered at her campaign headquarters in Manchester, New Hampshire, Tuesday night, calling for party unity and telling supporters that Democrats need a nominee “that the broadest coalition of our party feels like they can get behind.”
“But if we’re going to beat Donald Trump in November, we’re going to need huge turnout within our party, and to get that turnout, we will need a nominee that the broadest coalition of our party feels like they can get behind,” she said as the crowd shouted her name.
“We cannot afford to fall into factions,” she added. “We can’t afford to squander our collective power. We win when we come together.”
At this point in the race, Pete Buttigieg (D) has 22 delegates, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has 21, and Warren has eight. The next primary contest will take place in Nevada on February 22.
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