Iowa Caucus 2008
Published January 4th, 2008The Iowa Caucus, as a predictive tool, is pretty much worthless. They’ve chosen the president correctly (in a contested race) only twice - Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. Bill Clinton only got about 3% in 1992. Iowa is barely worth anything in the total delegate count - as well it should be, since it’s a tiny state. Something like 350,000 people voted. Winning Iowa is like winning a suburb of Los Angeles. It’s demographically homogeneous and politically flat.
Yet, every time we go through this, the press makes it out to be the Biggest Thing Ever. Hillary Clinton doesn’t care about her so-called “stunning defeat.” Hell, she beat her husband’s score by 27%! And she leads in almost every other state in the country. As much as the media wants it to happen, and you to believe it - Iowa is nothing. Huckabee vs. Obama? Ridiculously unlikely. And New Hampshire is worth even less than Iowa. Hilary is going to win New York, California, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and probably Texas. Edwards is probably going to trail 3rd in every major state. Obama will have to sweep almost every small state to have a chance - and that’s not going to happen. Iowa isn’t going to do anything for him in the long run, especially the way the primaries are set up this year.
In the past, an Iowa/New Hampshire winner could gloat for a while, get tons of free press before the big rounds of primaries. They happened in March. Now, the huge chunks come fast and furious, with everything probably decided on February 5th. There’s no time to milk a win - it’s state after state after state…and then almost all the states that matter within a month. In the end, Hillary will win her party’s nomination in a landslide.
On the GOP side, well….Huckabee has a “big” win in Iowa - but he’s going to get trounced in New Hampshire. Watch the media talk about how strong Romney is through 2 states, and the “resurgence” of McCain with his strong finish in New Hampshire. Where is Giuliani in all this? Well, he’s gone after a Big State strategy - and I don’t blame him. We’ll see if the press lets this strategy work though - with the short time between primaries, he might be OK. Giuliani is likely to take most of the big states, and Romney, Huckabee and maybe McCain will fight over the small ones. The GOP nomination could go any number of ways, and we just have to wait and see what happens. Also of note is Ron Paul, who has raised a ton of money and always performs well in online polls, but is non-existent in media polls. Sometimes he’s not even a choice though, so it’s biased. I think he is going to beat a “front runner” in quite a few states (as he just did in Iowa over Giuliani) but I don’t think he’s ever going to actually win a state.
Welcome to election season.
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