Iowa matters in ways far beyond who wins on caucus night.
We are finally getting to the period in the 2016 presidential cycle when ordinary voters start playing a role by participating in primaries and caucuses. Like every other cycle since the 70’s Iowa will be leading the way on Monday, February 1st with it’s famous (or infamous) caucuses. And while wining the Iowa Caucuses is certainly a big deal, it’s hardly the only thing that matters between caucus night and New Hampshire’s first in the nation primary on February 8th. Here are five things to look for next week that will tell you a lot about who will end up being the nominee in the end.
- Look for who beats expectations: Sure every candidate wants to win Iowa on caucuses night. But since the two parties’ caucuses tend to be overwhelmingly white and dominated by their respective activist bases it can often mean that certain, especially moderate, candidates don’t have a chance. The result is that the media and party actors react to caucus outcomes in a highly subjective manner. That is to say the media rewards candidates that exceed expectations with a burst of positive news coverage on the way to New Hampshire. While at the same the same time candidates who do worse than what’s expected of them tend to be labeled “losers” or get ignored entirely in news coverage. In other words Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton need to win by hefty margins on caucus night or they media will cover them in a negative way, and party actors will take that into account moving forward.
- Ignore the delegate math: After the epic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 cycle the press has been keen to cover the way delegate totals can differ from the raw outcomes of state by state wins and loses. That makes sense as its the delegates who ultimately pick the nominee at the parties’ respective conventions later in the year, but the 2008 race to the finish was fairly unique and unlikely repeat itself. Should the race drag out into April or May then it might make sense to look and the various sources’ estimations of delegates, but in all likelihood a dominant frontrunner winning a large majority of states will have emerged in the next two months. In fact it’s quite possible there could be only candidate left for each party by the time we get to mid-March
- Pay attention to endorsements: You wouldn’t know it from how the press obsesses over polls at this time in a campaign cycle but they still aren’t very predictive of final nomination outcomes. The good news is endorsements from other elected officials are pretty predictive when it comes to who gets to be the nominee. So make sure to pay attention House Members, Senators, and Governors who come out for various candidates before and after Iowa. Especially since most big-time elected Republicans haven’t picked a side even at this late date.
- Look for some major winnowing: The big thing to remember about the presidential nomination system is that it’s a sequential process. Thus it begins with a big crowd of people who are eliminated until only one remains, not unlike The Hunger Games. So on the GOP side four people who declared they were running for the nomination have already dropped out (while another half dozen candidates did “running for president” like things but never even made it to the announcement stage). Expect this type of winnowing to kick into high gear after Iowa where all but the top three or four winners will face major pressures to drop out. On the Democratic side this means Martin O’Malley is likely to quit relatively soon, while the Republican field could shrink to Trump and one or two anti-Trump’s pretty quickly.
- If Trump or Bernie Sanders wins, expect a long contest: Despite the rise of party “outsiders” like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, it’s still highly unlikely either one will win the nomination. The reason is pretty simple, while each is doing quite well in polling in early states this cycle they still are largely rejected by the sorts of party actors that tend to control which candidates gets the nod in the end. That doesn’t make it impossible either could become the nominee of their respected party, but they are unlikely to form the sort of “bandwagon affect” that propelled other outsiders like George McGovern or or Jimmy Carter to the nomination. Instead their opponents inside their parties will likely find a standard bearer and rally around them leading to a long drawn out fight, that they could easily lose in over the course of time.
We calls this democracy.
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