More Monday Cranky Blogging

Well, actually, it's over at Plum Line: I get cranky when people say that the Iowa Caucuses are going away. They will not.

But I'll toss in a good point that Ed Kilgore made:

You really need to dig into the details to understand Iowa, and that’s the real hold the state has over political junkies and candidates alike: the time you have to invest in the place tends to reinforce its importance.

To put it in a more positive way...

The point of primaries and caucuses isn't so much to contest the nomination; it's to generate information for party actors. Well, it also technically does determine the nomination, but because large electorates generally follow opinion leaders, as long as party actors collectively come to a decision, the chances of regular voters overturning that decision are very small. If party actors collectively -- and remember, activists or insurgents or whatever you want to call them are included in my definition there -- cannot come to a collective decision, then the primaries and caucuses to wind up determining the winner. But whether that's as an independent force or whether it's ratifying the winner of internal party decisions...well, it's harder to say.

But getting back to the question of generating information: one reason that party actors nationally are satisfied with Iowa and New Hampshire first, as opposed to perhaps rotating lots of states, is that they know a lot about Iowa and New Hampshire and therefore have relatively little difficulty understanding in context the results from those states.

At any rate, Iowa isn't going anywhere, as I said over there. And those who are constantly writing Iowa's obituary...well, they make me cranky.

No, Really, You Can't Skip Iowa (First 2016 Edition)

Yes, it's time to roll this one out already:

The first question Team Christie will have to confront will be whether they play in Iowa at all.  (Christie adviser Mike DuHaime declined to engage questions for this story.)

The last two GOP victors of the caucuses — Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008 — were ardent social conservatives, backed by gritty grassroots networks of evangelicals, pastors and home-schoolers and bolstered by a relentless retail repertoire.  At first glance, the Hawkeye State does not look like hospitable turf for the bawdy, biting Christie who has cultivated much of his personality around losing his patience.

That's David Catanese, with a balanced approach to the question of whether Chris Christie should skip Iowa (if he runs in 2016, that is).

Unfortunately: a balanced approach is the wrong approach. The correct approach is that no one should ever skip Iowa. You basically can't win a nomination while skipping Iowa. I'm just going to repost a couple of paragraphs from what I said about this way back in 2011...

Skipping Iowa doesn't work. Most people don't pay attention to presidential politics until very late in the game. When they start paying attention -- when the non-obsessive section of the news media starts paying lots of attention -- is around the Iowa caucuses, and a candidate not playing there will, naturally, not receive the publicity that the other candidates receive. Then comes the caucuses, and another blast of publicity that the non-participant will miss. And the last bit is that the winners in Iowa will at the very least be taken more seriously, and perhaps get the kind of windfall positive publicity that Jimmy Carter in 1976 or Gary Hart in 1984 got. Note that Hart's came from a weak second place finish; the news media have to find some candidate to give the rest of the primaries and caucuses some drama.

The truth is that if you don't have a realistic chance of finishing top three in Iowa, you really don't have a realistic chance of winning the nomination. And, yes, I know that John McCain fell just short of that, but that would certainly put him in the category of having had a realistic shot at the top three.

That's what I wrote pre-2012. Just a bit more: you don't have to win Iowa. You don't need to finish second in Iowa. I'm not even convinced that you need to finish third in Iowa. You certainly don't have to go all-in in Iowa, and you certainly can try to lower expectations there. You just can't take yourself out of the conversation for several months in the heart of the nomination battle and still expect to be the nominee, and that's pretty much what happens to anyone who skips Iowa. It's not a realistic strategy.

Catch of the Day

To Harry Enten, who teaches WaPo's Richard Cohen a bit about Republican primary and caucus electorates. Uh, yeah, New Hampshire Republicans are sharply less, not more, conservative than typical GOP primary-goers.

I do wonder about Iowa, however. As Enten details it, caucus attendees are quite a bit more likely to call themselves "very conservative" than primary voters in Ohio. I should know more about this than I do, but presumably some of that is about caucuses compared with primaries (caucuses get only the most intense voters, who are most likely not only to be strongly ideological but also more likely to think of themselves that way). The part I'm curious about is whether Iowa's first-in-the-nation status also plays in, with Iowa's voters getting the most partisan "education" of any.

At any rate: the more important point here is that everyone tends to overestimate the effects of going first. Yes, Iowa and New Hampshire do still perform some winnowing, but for the most part they simply implement choices made by the party as a whole. Candidates who are rejected by party actors nationally but take advantage of favorable local circumstances to run well in these early contests -- and Rick Santorum is a fine example -- generally tend to fizzle.

This also is the legitimate basis for the much derided "expectations" game. Some of that derision is deserved, but some of it is simply noting that context matters: a conservative candidate doing well in moderate New Hampshire should be treated as having accomplished more (all else equal) than that same candidate doing well in Iowa or South Carolina. And smart party actors react accordingly.

In other words, the whole complaint about Iowa/New Hampshire has been massively overblown, at least since the mid-1980s when the parties learned how to deal with the reformed process.

Also: nice catch!

Santorum Puzzler

There's a bunch of new, good stuff out there speculating about Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and exactly where the GOP race is now. I recommend Steve Kornacki, Ed Kilgore, and Nate Silver. I may have more to say about that in a bit, but for now I have a somewhat different question: why now, and not a month ago? That is, why has Santorum had a full, no-doubt-about-it national polling surge after his wins in Colorado and Minnesota, but not after Iowa? And it certainly mattered, in my view; had he had this surge in the first week of January, it's very possible he could have finished second in New Hamsphire and won South Carolina, and right now he'd either have it wrapped up or be close. So why not then?

First possibility: I know what you're all thinking; it's because he didn't actually win Iowa; or, more to the point, because he wasn't the announced winner. And that's certainly possible. But I don't believe it. Gary Hart finished a very weak second in Iowa and then a shocking win in New Hampshire, after all. That's why I predicted in advance that Santorum would get basically the same surge whether he finished first, second, or third (behind Romney and Paul, that is). Santorum would have been the unknown candidate with a surprise placing; that should have been enough to receive a flood of favorable publicity, and all year that's meant a polling surge.

I'm not sure I'll convince anyone, but I believe it, which sends me looking for other options:

Second possibility: Pundits had radically discounted Santorum because of the Huck in 2008, and perhaps others going back to Pat Robertson in 1988.

Third possibility: Santorum was helped last week by how few polls there were; while he was a surprise in the days leading up to Iowa, he wasn't much of a surprise that day. On the other hand, there were very few polls of CO/MN (and Missouri), and so his wins were a big surprise. No surprise, no positive coverage.

Fourth possibility: Three states trump one state. Possible, but seems unlikely to me.

Fifth possibility: Newt wasn't dead yet after Iowa, and the press loves him -- he got some of what Santorum had earned. By CO/MN, the press finally realized that Newt was really dead.

Sixth possibility: Santorum muffed the Iowa spin. He waited until late at night to deliver a victory speech, and then failed (in some way?) to capitalize on it over the next couple of days, including in GOP debates that weekend.

Seventh possibility: Because there were two upcoming debates and a big primary in New Hampshire in only seven days, the press got distracted from Iowa. After CO/MN, there was nothing up next for a while, so those stayed in the news cycle longer.

Eighth possibility: It wasn't a press story; it was a GOP party story. GOP elites were sending strong signals (were they?) after Iowa that Santorum was going nowhere. After CO/MN, they weren't. Note: this one is entirely speculative; I don't know what signals if any were being sent in either case.

Ninth possibility: delayed third-candidate effect. It wasn't about CO/MN at all; it was a result of Romney and Newt spending a couple of weeks attacking each other viciously. Problem: Santorum wasn't running an entirely positive campaign either -- but then again, perhaps no one noticed what he was doing.

And, finally, tenth possibility: Had Santorum won Iowa easily or finished a solid second or solid third, he would have received a bounce. A very, very close second didn't work because it set up a "who's the loser" story that was, for the time, answered with "Santorum." If Romney had won by ten points, the cable nets would have rapidly pivoted off the "who is winning?" story to a "who is this Santorum guy?" story.

So which of these is correct? I have no idea! I like 2, 3, and 10, and perhaps a bit of 6, but I really don't know. I'm not even sure I know what kind of evidence one could use to study this, although I am interested in knowing what Fox News and Rush Limbaugh were saying on January 3-4 and February 7-8. If anyone has any thoughts on all this, or even better any real evidence, I'm very interested.

Tie Goes the Other Way

So the official numbers from Iowa are finally out, and it's still a tie -- but now it's a tie with Rick Santorum having a few more officially counted votes than Mitt Romney. The Iowa Republican Party, which of course knows that Romney is very likely to be the nominee, has decided against calling it a win for Santorum, and the press is playing along -- the New York Times on its home page right now says "No Official Winner for Iowa Caucuses." Adam Serwer calls it correctly:

Odd that media legs are repeating "tie" spin in Iowa, since the only reason that's being said is to avoid embarrassing the assumed nominee.

And adds that if they called the old results a Romney win, then they should now be talking about a Santorum win. I agree -- although better, in both cases, to call it a tie. Remember, nothing tangible is at stake in the question of who had a few more votes, so I don't see any need for the press to pretend to know more than they actually do. It's a tie.

I think this actually demonstrates that I was correct in saying, before Iowa, that it didn't really matter how the votes fell as long as Romney, Santorum, and Ron Paul were 1-2-3 in some order. What mattered was the spin, especially within the partisan press. And that spin was largely independent of the exact order of finish. As it happened, Santorum seems to have received a lot less positive media attention than some previous strong finishers in Iowa, although I'll be interested to hear of any studies about what Fox News actually looked like in the days after Iowa.

Could things have been different had Santorum had this tiny lead on the night of the caucuses? There's no way to prove it one way or another, but again: lots of second place finishers have received plenty of great press. Some of this may actually have been Santorum's own fault, since he inexplicably waited until most people had gone to bed before giving a victory speech that night. But my assumption is that if GOP party actors really had wanted to derail Mitt Romney that they would have spun the results heavily for Santorum, and as far as I could see that never happened. It's hard to believe they would have acted differently had the tie gone the other way back then.

Iowa: Between Everything and Nothing

I feel as if I'm rerunning all my Iowa greatest hits today, but just a quick one: Iowa isn't everything, and isn't nothing.

So Brad Plumer notices that Iowa winners only get the nomination some of the time, which if you extend the logic winds up with Erik Loomis focusing on Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan and calling the whole thing a "clown show" best ignored.

They're missing the point. One more time: Iowa is only part of the process, but it's an important part. It can kill off campaigns that appeared to be strong, such as John Glenn in 1984 and Phil Gramm in 1996. It can boost previously obscure people into real contention, such as Gary Hart in 1984 and John Edwards in 2004.

Iowa doesn't do that all by itself. It does it in conjunction with what party actors have done before, and what party actors and other states do later. Even when it wraps up the nomination -- as it did for George W. Bush in 2000 -- it doesn't do that by itself. But yes, where you finish in Iowa really can sometimes affect the results of the nomination, all else equal. Affect, not determine.

Guessing Time

Who's going to win tonight in Iowa? No one knows. Certainly including me. But I do have a bit of value added here, although only after a couple of paragraphs of digressions & links.

Allow me first a bit of self-indulgence (or skip down to the next paragraph), but, well, here's what happened. I was included (thanks to my posting over at Greg Sargent's Plum Line) in a WaPo list of pundit predictions about the Iowa results. And while I try hard not to complain about editing, I'm slightly miffed about this one. They took out the first words of my explanation for my selection of Rick Santorum, which were "I really have no idea who is going to win." Ah well; next time, I'll emulate Dana Milbank, who wisely and safely predicted a Gary Johnson victory -- after a late-afternoon Huntsman surge fizzles out.

Anyway, for analysis of the polls, I'll direct you to Mark Blumenthal, who thinks that Romney will probably win, and Nate Silver, who also has Romney as the most likely winner but puts more stress on uncertainty. Those are both "polls of polls" types of analysis. Want to go to the next level? Harry Enten takes the next step, and does a poll of "polls of polls"; that is, he looks at all the models or averaging methods out there. His numbers come up Romney, too (yes, yes: by 2020 there will probably be a dozen or more Nate Silvers, and a handful of Entens, and therefore there will be a market opening some current sixth-grader will fill for someone to average the polls of polls of polls. That's the kind of US ingenuity that won the Cold War, folks).

I think it's time for that value added I promised up top. Here's the thing: all of the quantitative stuff found in the links in the previous paragraph are averages or models based only on what's in the top-line numbers available in the various polls out there. But we know of other factors that may cause candidates to over- or under-perform their poll numbers. So I figured it's worth it to go through all of them I can think of and note how they (may) affect each candidate. Note that if we actually knew how this stuff would work, we could incorporate it into the polling; the problem whether any of these effects will matter at all is unknown. Ready?

Organization: campaigns identify supporters and do whatever they can to get them to their caucuses. That's normal; what's different in caucuses is that each GOP meeting will feature speakers on behalf of each candidate -- if, that is, the campaigns have found someone to do it in that precinct. Helps: Romney, Paul, and Perry are said to have the most precincts organized. Hurts: Gingrich is almost certainly the least organized of the six

Strategic Voting: If you're a social conservative and don't trust Mitt Romney on the issues you care about, you may be relatively indifferent about several possible anti-Romneys, and shift your vote to whoever is doing best. Other shifts for other groups are possible, too. Helps: Santorum, perhaps Romney. Hurts: Gingrich, Bachmann, possibly Perry.

Iowa Conservative Turnout Bias: Nate Silver talked about this one. Candidates perceived as conservative tend to overachieve compared to polling in Iowa; moderates tend to underachieve. Helps: Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, and perhaps Gingrich. Hurts: Romney.

Enthusiasm: An obvious one; candidates with enthusiastic supporters should tend to overperform. Helps: Paul, of course. Hurts: harder to tell, but probably everyone else.

Momentum: Let's define this (as Silver's model does), for the purpose of this exercise, as simply extending recent trends to account for the time between the last polls and actual voting. In other words, if people were moving towards a candidate over the weekend, it makes sense that whatever was causing that would probably still be operating yesterday and today. Note that this one overlaps with some of the others, especially strategic voting, but it isn't quite the same thing. Helps: Santorum. Hurts: Paul, Bachmann. Gingrich was losing supporters until recently, but he's been pretty flat over the last week.

Late Campaigning: This one should almost completely overlap the previous one, but it's worth noting that some candidates were probably throwing a lot more money at TV screens across Iowa over the last few days than others. Helps: Perry, Paul, Romney. Hurts: Gingrich, Santorum, Bachmann.

Regional Weather Effects: Caucus attendance is presumably more sensitive to bad weather than primary voting would be, and to the extent that neither weather nor candidate support is uniform across the state, it's easy to imagine fairly significant effects here. Helps and hurts? No idea. Ask reporters for this one.

Am I missing anything? Important caveats: in addition to what I said above about not knowing the magnitudes of any of these, or even whether they exist, my "helps" and "hurts" categories are just my speculative impressions of what's going on there. It's certainly possible, and perhaps likely, that anyone who has dug more deeply into the polls and the detailed campaign reporting might have a convincing argument for why I got one of these wrong.

My general sense of this -- and again, it's just guesswork at this point -- is that Santorum was on the good side of a lot of these effects, and Gingrich was on the bad side. But what that means for tonight...we're just guessing.

Feeling Patriotic

Tonight, the Iowa Caucuses. After three years or more of the invisible primary, it's finally time for the next phase of things, the caucuses and primaries, in which regular citizens get their say. As long-time readers may recall, I have a standard Election Day post, which I'll have to edit more than usual for the circumstances of the day. But as always, I'm feeling patriotic.

I do love Election Day. 

And the Iowa Caucuses are especially fun, an Election Day with it's own, completely different set of rituals. No day-long coverage of voting, of course; the caucuses begin at 7PM local (Central) time. Entrance polls, instead of exit polls. The caucuses are really made for the cable news networks, which can put cameras right there and give live coverage to the proceedings; even more than that, they're a perfect fit for C-SPAN, which of course doesn't break away for the boring bits, and as you might guess I love the boring bits. The wonderful thing about the caucuses is that in the end they are all about ordinary citizens organizing themselves politically.

You know, most of my academic work and interests are all about how small a portion of democracy is occupied by today -- I think democracy is found in the complex workings of elites within party networks, and in Congressional committee rooms, and in interactions within issue networks, and in White House showdowns between the president and a reluctant Senator...all those things, to me, at an intellectual level, are democracy just as much as today's events. But nothing beats the rituals of Election Day. Hey, I even like the annoying and useless "What Does It All Mean" stories, as long as I can restrict my intake enough. I love watching the spin (but reporters: see Brendan Nyhan's excellent article). I love the weather stories. I love how we have have a verb just for tonight; they're not voting for a candidate, but caucusing for a candidate. I love the part we don't get tonight: "viability" and the Democrats' practice of having people physically move around the room in support of their candidate. I'm one of those people who could easily do without the National Anthem, and the Pledge doesn't do much for me -- and I really dislike the Selig-imposed 7th inning GBA. But then today comes around, and I know that I'm a very patriotic citizen of the USA.

And this isn't just any Election Day. The Iowa Caucuses are overloaded with symbolic value, and more-or-less rightly so. This is the first step towards choosing a president...hey, it may be Article II and all that --in other words, we're really not supposed to think of these folks as potential kings -- but in practice, we do, and tonight we get to watch ordinary folks choosing their own not-king. In YMCAs, in their homes, in other very ordinary places. And any Iowa eligible voter can get involved and, potentially, change his or her political party, just like that. 

So I've said more and I may get around to even more about the actual justifications for how democratic all of this is, but symbolically and ritually, it sure feels like democracy in action to me. Which leaves me, again, feeling patriotic. 

Catch of the Day

To No More Mister Nice Blog's Steve M., who took Frank Bruni to task for pretending that the Iowa caucuses introduce conservative extremism into the Republican Party.

I'm actually a bit ambivalent about this. On the one hand, it is definitely true that primary voters are more ideological than parties as a whole, and it's also definitely true that conservative activists have used the presidential nomination process over the years, and primary elections for other offices as well, to push the party to the right -- well to the right, overall, from where GOP voters as a whole might be most comfortable.

At the same time, however, there's nothing special about Iowa in all of that. The idea that Bruni is accepting, and that I've seen numerous times from others, that social conservatives and others with (relatively) fringe views are particularly to be found in the Hawkeye State is just nonsense. The silliest bit is where Bruni talks about "The state’s unrepresentative caucuses — in which a mere 100,000 or so of the most fervent voters, almost all of them white..." I'll not try to explain what's wrong with that. You can figure it out, right?

At any rate: nice catch!

No, You Can't Skip New Hampshire Either

Rick Perry is apparently telling reporters that he'll skip New Hampshire and make a last stand in South Carolina.

Two things. First, presidential candidates always say that they're going to stay in the race no matter what. Everyone should ignore those claims; they are necessary to make (more or less), but they aren't binding. Unless Perry finishes a strong fourth or better, I expect him to end his campaign. There's a certain amount of individual preference on these types of decisions (that is, about ending campaigns), but not all that much...it wouldn't be shocking if Perry insisted on getting clobbered in South Carolina, but it's not very likely. Assuming, that is, that he doesn't wind up doing better than the polling predicts.

Unless of course he does better than current polling shows in Iowa. Which is still possible, although less and less likely.

The second thing is that skipping New Hampshire is as much of an implausible strategy as skipping Iowa. Neither make any sense. That doesn't mean candidates have to go all-in on these early states, but they really do have to compete there.

The Santorum/Huntsman situation is a good example of that. Santorum may or may not wind up coming close to the nomination, but if he finishes in the top three in Iowa (as currently looks very likely), he's going to get a bump elsewhere. What about Huntsman, however? He's totally off the radar this week. He's been totally off the radar for the last month. He won't get a mention tomorrow night when TV and the rest of the press cover Iowa. He's unlikely to be subject to very much media attention over the next few days, either. And so it wouldn't be at all surprising if someone who has done little in New Hampshire so far overtakes him with a post-Iowa surge.

Consider what would be happening if Huntsman had focused on Iowa and Santorum skipped it and gone to New Hampshire. We'll never know whether Huntsman would have rallied, but certainly Santorum would not have. You just can't skip the key early states if you want to have any hope of being the nominee.

Quick Iowa Poll Notes

The last Des Moines Register poll is out tonight, with Mitt Romney leading and Rick Santorum, as more or less expected, moving up rapidly. For the full poll, conducted December 27-30, Romney leads at 24%, Ron Paul is second at 22%, then Santorum at 15%, Newt Gingrich 12%, Rick Perry 11%, Michele Bachmann 7%. However, Santorum was rallying so quickly that the DMR also released separate results from just Thursday and Friday, which showed Santorum jumping into second place over Paul, 21% to 18%. As with every other nomination poll all year, voters expressed a lot of uncertainty, so we could still see large changes.

Quick reaction? If in fact Romney, Paul, and Santorum grab the top three spots, it probably doesn't matter at all which order they'll finish in. The big story out of Iowa will be Santorum, who has received practically zero media coverage until this week and even now not much. That's going to be true whether the former Pennsylvania Senator finishes first, second, or third. He'll certainly (assuming nothing else happens) zoom up to at least fourth in New Hampshire the following Tuesday, and I'd bet he winds up higher than that -- perhaps a lot higher.

Part of what will determine how high he surges, and how long and serious his surge lasts, will be what key conservative groups and leaders think of him -- and what those who haven't yet endorsed Romney think of the Massachusetts governor. As I've said, it's possible that Romney has a batch of endorsements in his pocket just waiting for Iowa to be over in case Romney stumbled there. It's also possible that those who haven't jumped to the Mittster year really don't want to, but also haven't been even remotely interested in Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul (remember, when Perry was surging he did attract some endorsements, unlike the others). How big is that group, and how do they feel about Santorum? I don't think we know, but we may be finding out soon.

But it's unlikely, I think, that any of that changes based on the exact order of Romney, Paul, and Santorum.

Other notes...Newt Gingrich is, in my view, the most likely to underperform his poll numbers. Rick Perry? He's apparently well-organized; that could help him, as could last-minute advertising, but then again strategic voting could hurt him, with conservatives shifting to Santorum. Bachmann will probably continue to bleed support, hurt by strategic voting. In my view, it's still possible that Perry could sneak into the top three in Iowa, but highly unlikely that the other two will. It's also possible that Perry could survive to compete in South Carolina if he finishes a strong fourth -- although so far, there's no real sign he's going to do that. As I've said before, if they were normal candidates Newt and Bachmann would drop out after weak showings in Iowa, but normal incentives don't really explain their actions, so it's hard to know. I do expect Perry to drop out if he finishes a weak fourth or worse.

Santorum/Perry

Just a quick reality check. There have been six Iowa polls released this week, five of them based only on surveys begun after Christmas. Rick Santorum is certainly surging, in the sense that he was probably in sixth place before and appears to be in third place now. But careful...at least from what we've seen yet, his surge is still more semi- than certain, at least if we're talking about a strong finish.

In particular, here are Santorum's leads over Rick Perry in those five polls (four via Silver, plus NBC here): 0, 2, 2, 3, 1.

Impressed? I doubt it.

Now, if we go beyond the horse race numbers, it's clear that there's good news for Santorum in that his favorable ratings beat Perry's, at least in the ones I've looked at. And buzz and hype are clearly on Santorum's side. On the other hand, Perry is presumably going to be massively outspending Santorum on ads over the last few days. There's also the question of organization...I'm really not certain who has the advantage there, or how that will figure in.

I'm just saying: from the numbers so far, it ain't there.

UPDATE while I'm writing....and now a new poll is out with a 7 point gap between them. With Bachmann surging up to 12%! Maybe that's right...I don't know; it seems unlikely to me that Bachmann's week has helped her, but perhaps it has.

I guess I'll tie it all together by just emphasizing (1) Iowa is really hard to poll, and (2) try not to make too much of a lot of relatively small differences in polling numbers.

Romney in Iowa

A bunch of bloggers ran posts this week about mistakes they made this year. I try to do that as I go along, and I had a big one recently, so instead...I'm going to be self-indulgent, and note one that I got right.

I have a post up at Plum Line arguing that Jon Huntsman's fate -- and the possible surge of Rick Santorum -- show again that serious presidential candidates really can't skip Iowa. Which reminds me that I've been saying more or less forever that Mitt Romney would, in fact, compete in Iowa.

Of course, there's the question of competing there, which is important, and then there's the question of where the candidates are going to spend the night on Tuesday, which...isn't. NBC's First Read is making much of Romney's plans to stick around in Des Moines and do post-Iowa interviews there, instead of from New Hampshire. I'm sure this seems important if you're the one coordinating the interviews, but in the real world it's hard to see how it matters at all. If Romney finishes 4th in Iowa, it's a big deal no matter how much he tries to downplay it; being on the scene won't make it any worse. And if he wins...well, being there won't change the importance of that, either.

Cranky Wednesday Blogging 2

I'm mostly still over at Plum Line still today, but I seem to be running across stuff that gets me annoyed...so I think it's time for some Cranky Blogging. Which I should have used for my earlier item about Ron Paul, but it's definitely appropriate for this one, about a bogus attempt by NRO's Jim Geraghty to place Iowa and New Hampshire in "perspective" by looking at the delegates up for grabs and how they are allocated.

Which misses the point entirely. Iowa and New Hampshire aren't important because of the delegates, because nomination politics is in many cases not about the delegates at all. Oh, sure: you wind up winning most of the delegates when you win. But Tim Pawlenty didn't drop out because he hadn't won any delegates. He dropped about because he believed he didn't have the resources needed to win the nomination. And doing well in the first contests remains an important factor in allocating resources. Not the only factor (the invisible primary is more crucial), but important nonetheless.

It's certainly possible to overstate the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire. But it's not because they don't send a lot of delegates to the national convention, or because they're not winner-take-all. Geraghty isn't placing them in perspective; he's yanking them out of context.

Iowa Update

There's a new PPP poll out in Iowa, and I'm tweeting about it, so I figured I might as well turn it into a post as long as I'm up. Remember: I'm blogging because I'm up and thinking about it, but it's a single poll, and relatively small random variations could be showing up -- it's the first Iowa poll in several days, and so we have to wait for a couple more to get a better sense of everything. Remember too that the Iowa caucuses are notoriously hard to poll.

The top line doesn't show much: Ron Paul has a small lead over Mitt Romney (24%/20%), and then there's a modest gap before a bunched field for the other spots: Gingrich 13%, Bachmann 11%, Perry 10% , Santorum 10%. That leaves

Perhaps the biggest single number in the entire poll is Newts favorable/unfavorable ratings, which have totally tanked: he's at 37/54. PPP is making a lot of Santorum's favorable/unfavorable, which are the best in the field, but while he definitely could finish strong, I don't really see anything to convince me that he's in better shape than Bachmann (only slightly worse numbers) or Perry (who will outspend both of them). Remember, organization matters, too. I suspect that Newt's organization is also the weakest. I'd like to know more about how many caucuses will have someone speaking for the various candidates.

Mind a little speculation? Here's what I see, combining the PPP poll and Nate Silver's (topline-based) prediction model:

1. Any of the six could wind up with a top three finish in Iowa. Newt is least likely, in my opinion, but certainly could hang on and manage to do it.

2. Any of five -- all but Newt -- have a realistic chance of actually winning Iowa.

3. Of the six, only Ron Paul is a lock to finish in the top three. Anyone else could finish as low as 6th place, although I'd be a bit surprised if Romney did. It's hard to see Paul finishing worse than third.

4. Expectations do matter and are somewhat affected by objective factors (that is, pre-caucus polling vs. caucus results). So one of Perry/Bachmann/Santorum are still likely to be a significant story if one of them finishes third (likely), and even more so if one winds up second or, obviously, first.

5. On the other hand, as Silver just tweeted, there could be bandwagon effects if one of that group is perceived as breaking out in the next few days. In particular, that's probably where Newt is especially vulnerable; I suspect (and the crosstabs support this some) that a lot of conservatives and evangelicals parked with Newt when he appeared to be the most likely conservative/social conservative alternative to Romney (and Paul). That perception was probably still out there right now. If it collapses, his support could collapse, too.

6. Indeed, while he could still finish as high as second, if I had to bet on one of these six to finish behind the others my money would be on Gingrich.

7. But it's one (new) poll! I'm speculating! More information will be available soon.

Last caveat: this is only about Iowa. Iowa results matter, but how much and how depends on lots of other things.

Iowa Forever

Josh Putnam has a nice post up pointing out that you can ignore any claims you hear that the Iowa Caucuses will be jettisoned if Ron Paul or some other unlikely nominee winds up winning. As Josh says, the job of Iowa is to winnow the field, not to pick a winner. He also goes through some of the technical reasons why it's difficult for the parties in practice to shift away from Iowa.

I think the shorter version is simple: if you're going to have a sequential system, some state has to go first, and there's no particular reason to suppose Iowa is worse than any other state would be. Yes, it's not a demographic match for the nation, but no state is. You can come up with plenty of other dimensions on which it's not descriptively representative of the US as a whole, too -- but again, that's true for any state.

I'm also mostly not impressed, on the Republican side, by claims that social conservatives are especially important in Iowa. They are important, no doubt -- but is that really atypical for the GOP? It sure doesn't seem like it to me.

It also seems to me that the GOP nomination process is basically working pretty well this cycle. To the extent that stability helps that happen, keeping the early schedule in place is probably the best way to go. But as Josh says, we're probably stuck with Iowa (and New Hampshire) whether we like it or not.

Ignore Those Polls!

I'm no David S. Bernstein (although I am looking forward to seeing him tomorrow) but I've attempted to start a hashtag thingamabob over the last couple of days: #needmoreIowapolls. Basically, if you're a political junkie this time of the cycle, you really, really, really crave polling from the Hawkeye State.

On the other hand, the national and other state surveys? I've been saying to ignore them. And here's some nice evidence for it. Nate Silver has been crunching the numbers for a primary/caucus election forecaster, only to find, first, that a polling-based forecast more than thirty days out is hopeless, and then:

The model also makes a special provision for Iowa and New Hampshire, which can have an especially large influence on the race. A New Hampshire poll conducted one day after the Iowa caucuses will receive considerably more weight than one conducted just one day before Iowa. In practice, this means that the first New Hampshire polls conducted after Iowa will all but eliminate those conducted just before it.

There are usually eight days between Iowa and New Hampshire; this year they are a week apart. And post-Iowa polling will make pre-Iowa polling obsolete? Yikes!

I should explain...that doesn't necessarily mean that pre-Iowa polling in New Hampshire doesn't predict NH primary results at all. It just means that if post-Iowa polling is different (which may or may not be the case) that at that point you want to toss the pre-Iowa numbers. Presumably, the pre-Iowa numbers predict the post-Iowa numbers, at least better than starting from scratch would. Got that?

What I'd love to see Silver plug into his equation is whether Iowa polling helps predict New Hampshire (and other states). I suspect it wouldn't work -- what matters is the spin from Iowa, not necessarily the results, and even then Iowa polls aren't really a reliable enough guide to Iowa results for it to (probably) work. But I think it would be worth it to try running it, anyway.

Anyway, back to the main point: if polls more than 30 days out are useless right now, then national polls, too, are useless as predictors. I want more Iowa polls, precisely because the chances that the ones from only a week ago could already be useless, and because Iowa affects what comes next. And I'll sort of at least glance at New Hampshire polls beginning about now. But the rest of them? Ignore those polls!

Ignore Those Polls!

Gallup today started running a daily national GOP nomination tracking poll. Ignore that poll!

Yes, I know, you're going to peek at it, and I'm sure I will too. But we know how this works. People in California, and Texas, and New York, and everywhere else are going to be heavily influenced by the results of the early primaries and caucuses, and by the way the press interprets those events (which in turn is partially influenced by what elite GOP party actors say, but is also influenced by various press biases). Meanwhile, the national polls have little effect on what happens right now.

So if you ignore them, you don't miss their predictive power (because it's so small) and you don't miss their current importance (because it's also tiny).

What it's certainly time to do, however, at this point is to start watching the Iowa and New Hampshire polls. That Newt is up in Iowa at this point doesn't mean he'll necessarily win -- his lead isn't that large, and his support is soft -- but it certainly shapes the race for now, and the outcome in Iowa matters for New Hampshire, and the two of them matter for the next steps.

Everyone should just remind themselves that candidates who don't do well in the early states just completely collapse nationally -- see, for example, Rudy Giuliani 2008. And candidates who are at zilch nationally and then score in Iowa and/or New Hampshire can wind up with great national numbers almost overnight. Especially when, as is the case this year, everyone's support (except perhaps Ron Paul's) is incredibly soft.

Sequential Nomination System a Winner

Alec MacGillis has an interesting post yesterday arguing that the national nature of the GOP presidential campaign this cycle hint at a "declining legitimacy" of Iowa and New Hampshire.

That may be true if the justification for the current system is primarily based on the advantages of retail politicking. It's clearly in decline, for this cycle at least (and MacGillis quite properly is cautious about extrapolating out from current trends), or at least if we assume that there won't be a late Santorum surge in Iowa and a Huntsman surge in New Hampshire. Which could, of course, happen.

But I don't believe that retail politics is the real reason to have the current system. No, what is really important is having a sequential system of primaries and caucuses rather than a national primary. And the case for sequential is certainly a lot stronger after this year's clown show during the invisible primary. At least, that's the case if you believe (as I do) that what we've really seen is that practically any candidate can get a temporary bubble.

The problem, of course, is that if that bubble happened with just the correct timing for the national primary, a party might well be stuck with a Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, or even Donald Trump. Indeed, that's basically what happened in last year's GOP primaries in Nevada and Delaware; a candidate who couldn't hold up to serious scrutiny peaked at the right time and wound up winning a one-shot primary.

Sequential primaries are a good way to prevent that. And if you're going to go sequential, then sticking with the traditional small states at the beginning of the process seems as good a plan as any, whether or not the supposed benefits of retail politics are real.

On Iowa and New Hampshire Surprises

Larry Sabato has an article out today emphasizing uncertainty in the early states, noting that “From 1976 to 2008, there has been a major surprise every time either in Iowa or New Hampshire.” That’s true, as far as it goes: he’s right that no one expected Pat Robertson to surge to second place in Iowa in 1988 ahead of a sitting Vice President, or John McCain to upset George W. Bush in New Hampshire in 2000.

The truth is, however, that what those examples reveal isn’t that Iowa and New Hampshire can be volatile (although they are), but that surprises there often don’t matter very much, at least not since the modern system was set firmly in place in the 1980s. After all, George H.W. Bush in 1988 and George W. Bush in 2000 wound up cruising to their nominations, despite the hiccups along the way. In both cases, party leaders had pretty much settled on a winner, and looking back the day-to-day excitement of the primaries just wasn’t where the real action in those cycles was.

On the other hand, in contests in which party actors are unable to reach consensus on a nominee – most notably, in the last two Democratic nomination cycles – then the primaries and caucuses do have an important part to play. In 2004, Howard Dean’s miserable showing in the Iowa caucuses appeared (in my view) to have convinced party actors that Howard Dean’s popularity was hype, not reality, something that many of them were not at all certain of in fall 2003. And in 2008, Iowa had the opposite effect, confirming that Barack Obama would in fact appeal to rank-and-file voters – and setting up, as we all remember, a long contest with party actors and voters split, leaving the long sequence of primaries and caucuses to determine the nominee.

The problem for observers trying to figure out what will happen this time is that the “invisible primary” is, in fact, not very visible; it’s not always easy to figure out whether there is a winner or not. After all, we’re not just talking about a handful of party leaders in Washington; there are hundreds of party actors all around the nation, and it’s not always easy at all to know which are the most important ones or what they really think. The most tangible indications are high-profile endorsements and fundraising. Based on those it appears so far that Mitt Romney has a lead, but not nearly as solid as, say, George W. Bush in 2000. So we’ll see: Romney could add to that lead in the next few weeks, making Iowa and New Hampshire much less important, or party actors could stay on the fence, still hoping that they can support someone else. If that’s the case, the early states could indeed by critical.

But most Iowa and New Hampshire surprises have nothing to do with who eventually wins the nomination. They're great for political junkies (myself definitely included), and they're certain to be pounced on by the press, which has a strong interest in portraying nomination battles as close fights for as long as it can. They can  change the structure of the losers, keeping a Huckabee alive longer than otherwise would have been the case, or killing off a Glenn or Graham or Connally earlier than might have been. One Iowa surprise, George H.W. Bush's upset of Ronald Reagan in 1980, even eventually produced a president, by way of a VP selection. But while it's nice to be reminded that we could get something wildly unexpected out of an early state in January (where's that Roy Moore campaign, anyway?), it's more important to remember that those surprises usually don't mean very much.