It's hard to sell your presidential candidacy nationwide when the majority of primary voters who know you best are with your Democratic opponents, so look for Elizabeth Warren to be stepping up her resources in Massachusetts.
In his class called "The Road to the White House," Spencer Kimball, director of polling at Emerson College, discusses his latest poll where Massachusetts primary voters rank the Democratic presidential candidates.
It shows Bernie Sanders leading with 26 percent, followed by Joe Biden at 23 percent. Warren has 14 percent, and Pete Buttigieg has 11 percent. No other candidate drew double digits.
Most expected Warren would do better in her home state, but there are many theories why she didn't - from the fact that she has never run a national campaign, like Sanders and Biden have, to an explanation from one student.
"She can be very dry sometimes with, like, specific policy issues she chooses," the student opined.
"It's certainly an indication that she has work to do ahead of herself outside of just the policy positions," Kimball said. "She's going to have to connect better with voters."
Warren's campaign "Just hasn't caught fire in ways that most of us thought it would," added Professor Erin O'Brien at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
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O'Brien says in the long term, Warren is smart, in a huge field of candidates, to try to distinguish herself on policy, but adds that it's not the same early in her campaign.
"Policy doesn't get a ton of coverage, especially at the beginning," O'Brien said. "So she's leading with her best pitch when no one is paying attention to the mound."
Without a firewall on her home turf, Kimball says the pressure for Warren rises in New Hampshire, where she trails not only Sanders and Biden in the latest poll, but also Kamala Harris.
Of course, all these polls are extremely early, and the results will likely change many times before the primaries begin.
