CNN’s Harry Enten: Iowa Caucus Shows ‘Enthusiasm Problem’ for Democrats

Appearing Tuesday on CNN’s New Day, network analyst Harry Enten said the flat Iowa caucus turnout shows 2020 Democratic candidates have an “enthusiasm problem.”

The Iowa Democratic Party said voter turnout during the 2020 caucuses was similar to 2016, @ForecasterEnten says. "That is not particularly good. … There's supposed to be all this excitement around the Democratic Party wanting to beat Donald Trump."https://t.co/e9UzVbsuxI pic.twitter.com/5Gux6Q7d3H

— New Day (@NewDay) February 4, 2020

A partial transcript is as follows: 

JOHN BERMAN: In terms of news for the Democratic Party, writ large, the turn out was not particularly high.

HARRY ENTEN: No, it wasn’t particularly high. If you go back to four years ago, what the Iowa Democratic Party has said is this is about the same exact turnout. That is not particularly good. It’s not as strong as it was 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 they did between 2017 and 2018. So when you take those two data points and put them together, maybe there’s a little bit of enthusiasm problem for Democrats going forward.