By Steffen Schmidt
The 2016 Iowa First in the Nation Presidential Caucuses are shaping up to be asymmetrical and very interesting.
On the Democratic Party side Hillary Clinton has been the single candidate. No Democrat has stepped forward to challenge her as of this writing. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is a Socialist who caucuses with the Democrats in Congress. He’s not a Democrat just as H. Ross Perot was not a Republican. It’s likely that there will be several Democrats jumping into the race: Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chaffee are the most likely contenders. However, Hillary Clinton is well funded and has the support of many Democratic establishment leaders.
The Republicans have the opposite problem; a vast plethora of very diverse candidates.
As we will explore in my free, online, Iowa caucuses course (a Massive Open Online Course or MOOC) when a party has a clear frontrunner, turnout on caucus night for that party is low because the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
On the other hand when there is an electrifying contest between two or three superstar candidates caucus night turnout shoots to record highs. The best example is the 2008 contest when a charismatic Barack Obama, a very dynamic and interesting John Edwards, and the most admired woman in the world, Hillary Clinton, were running.
The Republicans will likely field fifteen or more contenders. With no clear frontrunner and really no “superstar” I assume that the turnout on caucus night will be high.
We have been monitoring the turnout and the feedback at political events in Iowa and New Hampshire over the past six months. It’s very interesting that every Republican who has shown interest in running and they have all been to Iowa and New Hampshire, has a fan club.
The most recent NBC/WSJ poll shows five frontrunners and nine “trailers.”
Bush 23%, Rubio 18, Walker 14, Paul 11, Cruz 11, Huckabee 5, Christie 5, Carson 7, Perry 2, Santorum, Kasich, Graham, Jindal, Fiorina 1%. It may surprise that even Donald Trump has a slice of admirers even though the media dismisses him as a distraction. Once these candidates begin to ramp up their campaigns the “trailers” are very likely to get a bounce, tightening the overall race.
We believe that the field will thin out but still be very substantial on caucus night.
Oddly enough it doesn’t matter how big a victory a contender has on caucus night.
In the classic 1976 Iowa caucuses, the first that generated huge media coverage the results were: “Uncommitted” (37%), Jimmy Carter (28%) Birch Bayh (13%), Fred R. Harris (10%), Morris Udall (6%), Sargent Shriver (3%), and Henry M. Jackson (1%). Coming in second and with only 28% Jimmy Carter went on to “parlay” his meager caucus victory into a nomination and four years in the White House.
In 1980 the results were: George H. W. Bush (32%), Ronald Reagan (30%), Howard Baker (15%), John Connally (9%), Phil Crane (7%), John B. Anderson (4%), and Bob Dole (2%). Ronald Reagan, of course, went on to win the nomination and the presidency with only a third of the vote on caucus night.
Of course it’s possible that the field will be winnowed before the February 2016 caucus night. Winnowing is “ … an agricultural method developed by ancient cultures for separating grain from chaff. It is also used to remove weevils or other pests from stored grain.” One of my former students, now a prominent consultant, says that’s an appropriate metaphor for politics, “especially the part about weevils and pests.”
However, history suggests that it’s likely that seven or eight will remain on the radar and receive votes. The reason of course is that there is no threshold in the Republican Party as there is in the Democratic caucuses for who is a “viable” candidate. As a grassroots event, as long as a candidate has supporters in any of the 1700 caucuses he or she can emerge with a percentage and thus potentially remain in the game past Iowa and even New Hampshire.
One thing is clear. The 2016 race for the White House promises to deliver great theater.