January 02, 2008
HappyIowaNewIowaYearIowa
In case you missed it, and there's pretty much no chance you have, the Iowa caucuses are tomorrow, Jan. 3, more than eight months (!) before the first party nominating convention will be held. The ground in both fields has shifted dramatically this month alone, which indicates that what the tiny percentage of Iowans who caucus tomorrow have to say will probably not hold.
Nonetheless, there are more media outlets on the ground in Iowa today than ever before, and coverage is wall-to-wall. We've explained before why Iowa polls are unreliable. The new Register surveys, which show Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in the lead, were conducted Dec. 27-30, when enough Iowans to skew the results were probably traveling and therefore were unable to pick up the phone. There are also questions about whether Iowans, who by some accounts are receiving more than one campaign-related phone call a night, are still picking up their phones at all. (Think about it: Would you?)
Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal -- a new National Journal Group colleague (welcome!) -- has some must-read explanations of Iowa polling.
Moreover, there are long-lingering questions about the actual significance of the Iowa caucuses. Democratic caucus-goers tend to be more liberal than primary voters elsewhere, and GOP caucus-goers more conservative. Fewer than 10 percent of Iowans, who are overwhelmingly white, participate, but the outsized media coverage arguably has a king-making effect. Those candidates who don't place in the top five might be considered road kill by Friday morning, which could doom them in other states where they are faring better.
Georgetown's Christopher Hull crunches the numbers in his new book, "Grassroots Rules" (seriously, there are charts and graphs). If you want to understand Iowa's effect on party nominations, read this book. His ultimate conclusion is that Iowa is important. But: "Controlling for New Hampshire results and measures of exhibition season performance, Iowa is not a statistically significant predictor of overall primary performance."
That's actually good news for first-in-the-nation Iowa-haters. Come Friday, everyone can (and probably will in the GOP field, because support is so soft) live another day if they choose. But insofar as the media are already driving results -- to the detriment, arguably, of candidates like John McCain and Joseph Biden -- the growing intensity of focus on Iowa could magnify this trend.
Blame the Internets: "The Iowa Caucus impact is distorted relative to the technical importance of the contest and getting more so as online politicking gets more intense. As we've seen," Hull concludes, "that raises the stakes on the debates within the literature, the press, and the political community about Iowa's future in the first-in-the-nation presidential contest slot."
All that said, the caucuses will impact candidates' next moves, though obviously we'll all have a better sense of where things stand after the New Hampshire primaries next Tuesday. Because the leaders in these two states are different -- McCain stands to come in first or second in the Granite State, while Huckabee probably won't do well among the moderate Republicans there -- we're most likely dealing with two wide-open party contests by this time next week. So, it's probably too early to be discounting some candidates, as ABC and FOX News are in debates this weekend. On the other hand, fewer talking heads = more time for substantive talk. (One hopes.)
Here are some questions to ask between now and tomorrow night:
Did Benazir Bhutto's assassination impact Iowans enough to affect their vote? Pocketbook issues seem to be surpassing the war in Iraq/on terror, but the candidates were forced to turn the topic back to foreign policy/defense last week. Pakistan is a major issue in the Beltway, but it's not clear how much this story resonates in the Farm Belt.
What happens to Camp Clinton if the New York senator comes in third? As efficient as Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign machine is, her people do not excel at damage control -- almost to the point where they start to look panicky. To wit: her two-minute-long closing arguments ad. Very kitchen sink.
And finally:
Mike Bloomberg. Really???
The Hotline is on the ground in Iowa this week. Ronald Brownstein was there over the weekend and is now New Hampshire-bound. Happy 2008, Beltway! Now get back to work.
Posted at 1:04 PM
Posted to:
Asia, Barack Obama, Campaigns, Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, Joseph Biden, Media, Mike Huckabee, Pakistan, Republicans, WH 2008
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