Political observers gave U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren high marks in Tuesday night’s debate –the last debate before the first voting, at the February 3 Iowa caucuses. She adeptly deflected a question aimed at eliciting a fight between her and Senator Bernie Sanders over whether a woman can be elected president. She also skillfully responded to a question of whether her qualifications to be “commander-in-chief” might suffer from a “weakness” when it comes to being able to “lead the military.”

Openly gay presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg took a soft hit when businessman Tom Steyer noted that Buttigieg was the same generation as Steyer’s four children and that he should be “standing up more” to oppose the destructive forces of climate change. When asked what he would do to help farmers and factories that can’t relocate to avoid the record flooding in Iowa, Buttigieg rambled about Indiana and Australia before offering a “national project to do something about it.” When pressed again, he offered “federal funds.”

No one asked Buttigieg about electability and whether his being gay might be an obstacle to winning a general election against President Trump. After more than a year in the campaign mix, Buttigieg has succeeded in presenting himself as a whole candidate: He is still one of the top four hopefuls who have a chance to win in Iowa next month and still one of only six candidates who raised enough support to be on the stage for the national Democratic debate January 14 –and he’s still openly gay.

Some pundits, including CNN which hosted the debate with the Des Moines Register, said Buttigieg, Warren, and Senator Amy Klobuchar were among the “winners” of the debate.

Other media suggested other winners. Fox News said Sanders, Vice President Joe Biden, and Klobuchar. Scoring by 14 New York Times opinion writers suggested Warren did best, followed by Sanders, then Klobuchar. (They put Buttigieg in fifth place.) Three Politico.com campaign reporters picked Biden.

What matters now is volunteers, dollars, and perceived electability in Iowa. Winning the Iowa caucuses requires having supporters –as many as possible– show up at 7 p.m. to their local caucus site –one of 1,681 precincts— and express their preference of candidate. If some candidates get very few supporters, their supporters can then shift their support to another candidate. Once the various candidate groups have the minimum number of members, each group can elect delegates to the county caucus based on the number of supporters in the group.

During a state Democratic convention in New Hampshire in September, Warren and Buttigieg demonstrated their campaigns had strong ground games. Biden not so much.

Dollars and data

The latest data from the Federal Elections Commission shows Sanders to be the top-dollar-raising Democrat, with $74 million raised thus far. Warren is in second place with $60 million, Buttigieg in third with $51 million, businessman Tom Steyer with $49 million, Biden with $37 million, and Klobuchar with $13 million. President Trump’s campaign has raised $165 million.

A RealClearPolitics.com average of the latest national polls, as of Wednesday (January 15), show Biden with 27 percent, Sanders 19, Warren 16, Buttigieg seven, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg with almost seven percent.

Buttigieg has rarely polled above single digit nationally, but his polling in Iowa suggest he has a chance to do well there.

The RCP average of the latest polls in Iowa show Biden with 20.7 percent, Sanders 20.3, Buttigieg 18.7, Warren 16, and Klobuchar with seven.

Whoever wins Iowa will almost certainly get a big boost in the polls and in New Hampshire’s primary February 11.

Fivethirtyeight.com, the data analysis website created by openly gay statistics guru Nate Silver, calculates that, as of Tuesday morning, Biden stood a 39 percent chance of winning a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

“He’s followed by Bernie Sanders with a 23 percent chance, Elizabeth Warren with a 13 percent chance and Pete Buttigieg with a 10 percent chance,” said fivethirtyeight.

The statisticians used their newly created model to forecast, but Silver presented the forecast with a mountain of explanations and caveats and said it is subject to revision as the primaries and caucuses unfold.