Why The Iowa Caucuses Are Still Wide Open
December 20th, 2006 at 02:31pm Chase Martyn
There has been a lot of talk over the past few weeks about who is going to win Iowa in 2008. I’ve been resisting the temptation to join, because it’s pretty unlikely that the picture we see now will look anything like the picture we see a year from now.
Think of how much has changed from four months ago: Warner, who has since dropped out and now might be un-dropping out, was attracting a lot of Iowa support. Obama, whose candidacy I have been predicting for a year, was written off as too green and inexperienced to run in 2008. Bayh looked like he had too much money not to play in at least the first four primary states. John Kerry was not a favorite, but he was in as good a position as any of the candidates. And John Edwards was probably getting the most buzz around here. (Incidentally, Hillary’s position as the elephant in the room everyone either loves or loves to hate has remained relatively consistent this whole time.)
Since then, Warner and Bayh dropped out, and a lot of people started talking about what that might mean, often concluding that it was because the caucuses were close to being decided — already. (Kyle’s post here is actually what provoked me to write this.) Here are five reasons why it’s still wide open:
- The caucuses are an expectations game above all else. Given two candidates with equal money, talent, charisma, etc., the candidate who is favored more heavily is actually in a weaker position right now than the candidate nobody is talking about. To “win” the caucuses, you have to beat expectations, not just the other candidates, and the job gets harder and harder as expectations get higher and higher.
- Nobody knows what to expect from Tom Vilsack. Before he announced, I didn’t know very many people who took his candidacy seriously. But his campaign has assembled an excellent staff, and he keeps on impressing me. He isn’t expected to do all that well nationally (his strategy is clearly to paint himself as the underdog of the race), but nobody really knows how well he’ll end up doing in Iowa. (Drew has some thoughts on how well he has to do to stay in, but even he’ll admit that it’s guesswork at this point.) Again, though, I think it’s clear a fair number of candidates have to play in Iowa (particularly Edwards and probably Obama), and, if Vilsack can even hold his own against them, he isn’t out of the picture.
- The majority of the field hasn’t even declared yet. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and John Kerry are all staying above the fray by not making themselves candidates yet. As soon as they do, expect a lot of rhetoric to change. Even if attacking Obama will hurt the attacker more than it will hurt Obama, somebody will start doing it as soon as he declares in hopes of shaking the tree a little bit. Expect a wave of attack dog pundits and surrogates as soon as Obama and Clinton declare. We don’t know how that will turn out.
- Nobody is talking about John Edwards right now. Even though Edwards is a fundraising force with name recognition, a strong biography, charisma that rivals Obama’s, and a reputable staff, he has avoided high expectations. Polling in Iowa has consistently put him on top, and it looks like he’s going to declare pretty soon, so it isn’t clear how he will end up.
- In the end, staff quality and political strategy make a much bigger difference in the caucuses than buzz and media coverage. John Kerry was not a frontrunner in November of 2003; he was closer to a longshot. But his staff put together a better field program than Dean’s staff, and he ended up winning. (And because Dean was the frontrunner before losing, it pretty much knocked him out.) Field work is huge in Iowa, and we probably won’t know who has the best field program until the caucuses are over.
Of course, keep checking here for more news and analysis as the field of candidates continues to narrow.
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Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous, President 2008, John Edwards, John Kerry, Evan Bayh, Barack Obama, Tom Vilsack, Mark Warner, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich
Related Searches: iowa caucuses, tom vilsack, iowa support, expectations game, john edwards
12 Comments Add your own
1. Mark | December 21st, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Pretty good commentary here, Chase. Recommended read. One thing I would add, though. People really need to think about the STRENGTH of each candidates support. For example…
My thinking is that people who are Edwards supporters are SOLID Edwards supporters - much like people who were supporting Dean. Difference is - there are a lot more Edwards supporters in Iowa than there were Deaniacs. On the Hillary front - I see her early adopters as a little bit more “inside baseball” types. These are people who have interacted with her as part of the Clinton machine from the 90’s. She is a talented politician, though, but it remains to be seen whether she can make the broad based appeal to the rank & file.
To be honest - I think that Vilsack is really a wild card in the Iowa Caucus. Edwards has a ton of early support and Hillary will run tough. I think that Vilsack peels off enough traditional activists statewide because he’s the “local guy” to make it a real toss-up in the end. Then …. you have Obama.
Should be a good time!
2. Iowa Progress » Oba&hellip | December 21st, 2006 at 8:49 pm
[…] No other candidate broke 10%. Top three Republicans are John McCain (27%), Rudy Giuliani (26%), and Mitt Romney (9%). I think this just reinforces my post from yesterday, “Why the Iowa Caucuses are Still Wide Open.” […]
3. moi | December 21st, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Don’t discount Kucinich. The Iraq war is an issue today, and will be even a bigger issue in a year.
IMHO to ignore Kucinich is to ignore the message of the 2006 election. Less than one year ago some (actually many) were saying the same about Congressperson Loebsack; “he will never be able to defeat Leach, the best he can do is loose by less than 10%”
4. Chase | December 22nd, 2006 at 12:31 am
Mark, I agree that the Edwards supporters are solid, except when it comes to Obama. I think the latest poll shows that, although people weren’t going to bail on Edwards for Hillary or Vilsack, some of them might be at least a little curious about Obama. Whether that holds, though, is anybody’s guess.
And “moi,” I don’t think Kucinich is worth discounting, except that at the moment he isn’t drawing any support that he didn’t draw last time around. I happen to like Kucinich, and I thought his Iowa stump speech was the smartest stump speech I heard from any of the candidates: off the top of his head, he quoted the bible, Joyce, and I believe Tenison. I also think he’s good at keeping our party honest and, to whatever extent possible, consistent with our liberal views in general.
But I don’t think Kucinich’s message connects with voters as much as you think, and I don’t think America voted Democrat in the last election because they liked Kucinich. You could make a case that they ended up liking what John Kerry was saying in the last general, or that they were inspired by a big name like Hillary, Obama, or even Edwards, but Kucinich wasn’t on everyone’s mind when they went into the voting booth. He is ahead of the curve on a lot of issues, but average voters are the ones setting the curve, and you can’t win by always being ahead of them. That said, I like Kucinich where he is, because he keeps us honest.
5. Michael | December 22nd, 2006 at 5:58 am
One conclusion that we can safely draw at this point, I would think, is that Hillary Clinton’s support in Iowa is extremely soft. It appears that the intense media coverage Barack Obama has been receiving has boosted his poll numbers greatly, and largely at her expense. It’s also interesting to note that Obama has equaled but not passed John Edwards despite the fact that, of the three, he seems to receive by far the least amount of media attention. A third point of interest is how poorly Tom Vilsack performs in his own state. It appears he has tried to move up to the Major Leagues, but his fellow Iowans consider him at best Triple-A material.
6. moi | December 22nd, 2006 at 11:50 am
Chase, I’m very active in Iowa’s Democratic Party. I often hear: “I like Kuchinich” and “he represents our liberal views.” And after that: “he is not electable” or “he is not viable.”
I do think that this time around there is a difference. Health care (and a general dissatisfaction with insurance companies) and the war in Iraq are in the mind of most voters. Obama opposed the war before he was a senator, but voted to fund the war every time. His “liberal voting record” is worst than Hillary’s. Obama voted for the Patriot Act, and for the 600 Miles Fence along the southern border. Obama is no progressive, he is a very “soft” liberal.
In January Bush will announce some kind of increase on troop deployment in Iraq. He will ask the congress for additional money, probably much more than the 160 billion he was saying he would ask only a month ago. By Spring we will know who voted for additional funding of the war and who did not. If by that time Kucinich is the only candidate opposing funding the war, I think that he will be able to get a strong support. Again, as I stated in my previous message, keep in mind that most people did not predict the “sweep” of the last election, much less that somebody like Loebsack could beat a “safe” seat like the one held by Leach.
Check how AP covered Kucinich’s announcement. This is the lead: “Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich launched his second bid for president on Tuesday, a long-shot candidacy fueled by his frustration with his party’s effort to end the Iraq war.” As the pressure from the base to bring the troops back *now* increases, the media will “rediscover” Kucinich, and IMHO it will start calling him the “wild card candidate.”
In the meanwhile, I hope that the Blogsphere will start looking at Dennis beyond the label of “electability.”
7. Katha | December 22nd, 2006 at 7:40 pm
I agree that the way each of these politicians reacts to Bush’s upcoming announcements about what he wants to do in Iraq will affect their standing. I think its an opening for John Kerry because he’s been the most aggressive against the war in the last year. I think he’s shown confidence and determination.
John Edwards and Barack Obama would attract the same voters, the voters who want to spend more money on poverty. Maybe they even have the same strategy, winning Southern states by appealing to the large African American consitituency in the Democratic primaries. In 2004, Edwards did very poorly in New Hampshire given that he’d come in 2nd in Iowa and had spent a lot of time in New Hampshire. Nobody ever talks about this but I’m curious: are his 2 youngest children from in vitro fertilization? People ARE going to be curious about that if he is the candidate and its not without controversy.
8. Dave Michaels | December 23rd, 2006 at 3:39 pm
In vitro? Who knows, that of course is private. But even if true, Edwards is pro-choice, so that doesn’t hurt him with Democrats, and nobody voting against someone based on in vitro would be voting for a Democrat in the general election anyway.
Notice that you never hear any Republicans mentioning in vitro clinics, calling for them to be shut down, etc. As Ron Reagan said, that’s because it would be a political non-starter.
9. Iowa Progress » Mor&hellip | December 29th, 2006 at 12:48 am
[…] These numbers look completely different from Research 2000’s poll last week, so here’s one more shout out to Chase’s Wide Open Caucus post. […]
10. 2008: Do any of the polls&hellip | December 29th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
[…] And if you need some really, really good reasons why to note that the caucuses are still wide open at this point, go read Chase’s post over Iowa Progress. The man says things a bit more eloquently than I do and more cohesively (as I think I might have written the different points he makes in a variety of different posts). His first, and I think, most important point is this: “The caucuses are an expectations game above all else. Given two candidates with equal money, talent, charisma, etc., the candidate who is favored more heavily is actually in a weaker position right now than the candidate nobody is talking about. To “win” the caucuses, you have to beat expectations, not just the other candidates, and the job gets harder and harder as expectations get higher and higher.” […]
11. Iowa Progress » Hil&hellip | January 3rd, 2007 at 11:41 pm
[…] Hillary will have none of these advantages and right now is clearly running fourth in Iowa. Although she may have a lot of money, media is secondary to field in caucuses and among Democratic activists, all the candidates have high name ID. It’s still early and as Chase pointed out recently, the Iowa Caucuses are still wide open. But, Hillary is clearly starting behind the eight ball and it would not be a surprise if she doesn’t compete in the caucuses at all and tries to build up New Hampshire and South Carolina as firewalls. […]
12. Iowa Progress » Hil&hellip | January 21st, 2007 at 1:26 am
[…] Now that Hillary Clinton has declared that she’s going to run for President (and ruined Sam Brownback’s day too). We thought it would be worthwhile to revisit some of our past coverage of Hillary and the caucuses. This includes one post on the challenge that Hillary faces in Iowa and why the caucuses are still wide open. But for now, my biggest concern is how it looks when I have to explain that the url www.brownback.com is in my history and why it’s totally non-sexual. Hillary Clinton may be getting the attention today but Sam Brownback will still have a hilarious last name tomorrow. […]
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