The good news for Buttigieg in our poll is fairly obvious. He's up to double digits, which follows our Iowa poll showing him in lead.

It doesn't take a lot of digging, however, to see why Buttigieg might have a big league problem once the Democratic primary moves outside of the mostly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Buttigieg scores 17% among white potential Democratic voters. He's at a mere 4% with nonwhites.

A racial gap is nothing new for Buttigieg. What's interesting is it seems to be getting wider.

Last month, Buttigieg was at 9% among whites and 2% among nonwhites. That is, the racial gap nearly doubled from 7 points last month to 13 points this month.

Interestingly, Buttigieg's national numbers nearly mirror what his polling in Iowa looks like over the last couple of months. In an average of our September and November polls, Buttigieg was at 18% among whites and 6% among nonwhites.

-snip-

What's the point: Buttigieg is clearly one of the -- if not the only -- frontrunners in the Iowa Democratic contest right now. Yet, some (like myself) have wondered aloud about whether Buttigieg will be able to translate his Iowa success into more diverse states like Nevada and South Carolina. That's because Iowa is overwhelmingly white and Buttigieg has consistently polled poorly among nonwhites (specifically African Americans) nationally.

There's no doubt that some portion of Buttigieg's lower numbers with nonwhite voters has to do with lower name recognition, which isn't a problem for him in Iowa. I am, however, skeptical that lack of name identification is the root cause of Buttigieg's issue with nonwhite voters. Why? Buttigieg is polling far worse among the relatively few nonwhite likely caucusgoers in Iowa.

Although our last Iowa poll has an insufficient sample size to judge how nonwhite Democratic caucusgoers feel about Buttigieg, we can combine our last two Iowa polls (September and November) to get a good understanding of where nonwhite caucusgoers stand compared to white Democratic caucusgoers.

In our combined sample, Buttigieg scores a 50% favorable rating and an unfavorable rating of 26% among nonwhite likely caucusgoers. That makes for a net favorability rating of +24 points. This is not a particularly strong number for a Democrat among Democratic caucusgoers.

To put this net favorability rating into some perspective, it looks a lot more like the overall net favorability ratings for lagging candidates such as California Sen. Kamala Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker than it does for a frontrunner.
White likely caucusgoers score Buttigieg much more highly. He earns a 73% favorable rating and an unfavorable rating of 13%. That makes for a net favorability rating of +60 points.

In other words, Buttigieg's net favorablity rating is twice as high among whites than nonwhites in Iowa.

-snip-