No one has ever ascended from mayor to president in one fell swoop, but Pete Buttigieg is trying to change that. And from mid-March to mid-April, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s position in the race significantly improved — he surged in the polls and garnered a sizable number of donors, enough to easily meet both the polling and donor requirements for participating in the first two Democratic primary debates.
While Buttigieg’s upward trajectory in the polls has seemingly halted and he looks to have settled in at around 6 percent, down from a peak of 8 percent, that’s still a big jump for a candidate who started the race polling at 0 percent. So here is a closer look at Buttigieg’s rise and how he compares to other 2020 candidates, plus an idea of what this could mean for him moving forward, since he’s still relatively unknown. CONT.
Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight