More 2012 Myths
Primary polls three years before the vote? "Next in line" nonsense? Here is a debunking of some political legends.
The myth of the five tickets
A popular political prediction system holds a candidate must get one of five tickets to remain in the race: finishing in the top three in Iowa or finishing in the top two in New Hampshire. If a candidate does that, it’s assumed that they’re a serious candidate who can go all the way.
But are they?
In 2008, Fred Thompson finished just ahead of John McCain in Iowa to take third place. This kept Thompson in the race until South Carolina. Based upon this myth, many conservatives opened their wallets, including me. Of course, Thompson dropped out after finishing third in South Carolina.
Recent history indicates, without winning in Iowa or New Hampshire, a candidate is done for.
Howard Baker (1980), Lamar Alexander (1996), Alan Keyes (2000), and Thompson (2008) all found their third place Iowa ticket led nowhere. Pat Robertson’s 1988 second place finish in Iowa led only to winning four caucus states due to strong organizational efforts. Steve Forbes (2000) finished second in Iowa and dropped out two states later.
I hate to agree with John Kreese in Karate Kid II, but in presidential politics, second (or third) place is no place. On the Republican side, every year since 1976, the Republican nominee has been the winner of either the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary.
This has been the case on the Democratic side, with the exception of 1992 when Senator Tom Harkin was a favorite son in Iowa, and Senator Paul Tsongas (D-MA) was a favorite son in neighboring New Hampshire despite the fact there was no way he could win a national campaign. This opened the door for Bill Clinton to win the presidency on the strength of finishing second in New Hampshire.
On the GOP side, the ultimate predictor of the last five open nominating contests hasn’t been Iowa and New Hampshire, but rather South Carolina, which has given decisive momentum to every GOP candidate since Reagan.
If there’s a rule by which one can divine how the presidential primary process will go, it could be said that the Republican nominee will win either Iowa or New Hampshire and go on to win South Carolina. The only natural exception to this rule is if a favorite son nullifies one of these three states as a presidential predictor.
There’s a reason Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina dominate, and it’s not magic. They vote first. Many states (and even Puerto Rico) have tried to preempt Iowa and New Hampshire. Yet the national recognition these first two contests generate has led to boycotts. Whether it was Puerto Rico in 1980, or Louisiana and Delaware in 1996, states that tried to muscle in on Iowa and New Hampshire earned only sideshow status.
Many larger states have tried to make these states less important by moving their primaries up in the calendar, with the result being front loading the primary calendar. Actually, they’ve only made the big three more important.
Momentum becomes huge when you have a 20-plus state Super Tuesday. With the GOP’s winner-take-all primary system in some cases, the pressure is especially strong to unite behind a nominee. Imagine what would have happened if, on Super Tuesday, instead of voting for McCain, Delaware, Illinois, and California had voted for Romney and Missouri and Oklahoma had voted for Huckabee. The GOP nomination process would have essentially been on a collision course with the fantasy of political junkies and the nightmare of party leaders: a long slog through the primaries followed by a brokered convention.
The drive to unite the party and prepare for the general election led many to conclude that a bad nominee was better than a long divisive nominating process. As long as the GOP nominating process remains as it is, the drive to unite will make most states choose to “follow the leader” in order to avoid the specter of an intractable nomination battle.
It should be noted the RNC and DNC are both looking at the presidential election calendar to try and solve problems. In a less frontloaded process, it becomes possible for campaigns to last longer and overcome early primary losses. Ronald Reagan began the 1976 presidential campaign with six straight losses, but managed to come back to nearly take the nomination from Gerald Ford because the campaign was less compressed.
Successfully reforming the primary system is doubtful. Members of the RNC are parochial, which has hampered primary reform in the past. That is, unless the RNC concludes the system is so badly broken and detrimental to nearly every state that any change (other than a national primary) would be an improvement, I don’t see primary reform happening. Even if the RNC comes to an agreement, they’ll most likely need some cooperation from the DNC and state secretaries of state to make any plan successful, which is going to make this delicate process even more challenging.
Conclusion
One thing to remember is that historic presidential prediction models do not have to determine the future. When pundits cite myths like the “next in line” myth, they do so with the intention of dictating what your choice has to be. “Romney is next in line and will be the GOP nominee. Accept it.”
My purpose has been is to show what the current history is. Whether you decide to go with it or swim against it is entirely up to you.
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Adam Graham is a contributor at Race42012.com and host of the Truth and Hope Report podcast. His personal site is Adam's Blog.
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19 Comments
1. More 2012 Myths | Secolul 21 ~ 21st Century:[...] this link: More 2012 Myths This entry is filed under America – Blogs, Pajamas Media. You can follow any responses to this [...]
Jul 29, 2009 - 5:25 pm 2. Sapwolf:Yes it is early.
But primary and general election predictions are WAY FUN!
Aug 3, 2009 - 6:40 am 3. urbanleftbehind:Sonny Perdue lurks in the bushes!!!! Thats where I put my money. Governor of a large state (GA), a cutter, hard on immigration, innovative transportation and infrastructure, has some black cred, access to Atlanta corporate money…….
Was the John Kreese reference actually from Karate Kid I or was it in the part of KK II when John Kreese berated young Johnny (played by legendary direct-to-video actor Bill Zabka) only to end up nearly choked to death by Mr. Miyagi in the parking lot after the tournament? Memory fails me at this moment…
Aug 3, 2009 - 7:42 am 4. dmk3:Chaney in 2012
Aug 3, 2009 - 9:42 am 5. Pete D:In place of irrational speculation forget about the Republican candidate in 2012. Instead focus on races at every level in the 2010 election. If we’re to have a chance in 2012 to break the socialist hold on our country we must do it in steps. The first is stop health care reform as Democrats propose it; Stop a second Stimulus bill; Oppose further Obama nominations to the Supreme Court, and put your Congressman/woman and Senators on notice to do the job you sent him/her to Washington to do or you’ll vote against him/her in 2012. As to Palin, I have nothing against her. Give the woman a break to do her “thing” and let’s see where we’re at after 2010. Finally, if you abhor what’s going on in this country as much as I do then get active and become a participant. Volunteer, donate money regardless of the amount, attend rallies, boycott Government Motors, help to locate viable candidates for office and work to get every Republican vote to the polls in 2010. It’s your call fellow Republicans. Do it or live under the hammer and cycle of Obama.
Aug 3, 2009 - 10:05 am 6. arhooley:>>Whether you decide to go with it or swim against it is entirely up to you.
Casting my vote for “Swim.”
Aug 3, 2009 - 10:23 am 7. John B:I agree with Pete D. Throw the bums put in 2010!!!!! Let’s keep our focus on state elections.
Aug 3, 2009 - 10:29 am 8. SteveB/Colorado:#5 Pete D.: on the surface, this sounds good, but is it really?
Particularly the comment: “…..work to get every Republican vote to the polls in 2010….” What sort of Republicans are we talking here? I’m a life long conservative Republican of the fiscal and somewhat libertarian persuasion. I absolutely abhor the so called social conservatives and their continuing attempts to cram their version of “that old time religion” down everyone’s throats; blurring the line between church and state; pushing their anti-abortion rhetoric; etc. and etc. I’m all in favor of family values, protecting kids, etc. But all the additional religious baggage is not welcome in my conservative Republican world.
Here in Colorado, in the party grassroots/rank & file, the religious conservatives have held sway for 20 years. Other conservatives have largely been pushed out or marginalized. Colorado is a so-called moderate state, which generally means either right or left extreme is not going to win elections. Which is why the Republican party has been decimated here in recent elections. For Republicans to return to power in Colorado, assuming no major Dem blunders, we need to get back to our traditional fiscally conservative and conservationist roots and send the religious groups back to their pulpits.
Aug 3, 2009 - 1:50 pm 9. smith:Please God let it be Sarah Palin.
So we can crush her and the GOP.
Aug 3, 2009 - 3:03 pm 10. sharonsj:Gee, I thought you meant 2012 the end of the Mayan calendar and possibly the end of the world as we know it. Funny how it may happen thanks to the depression, the tanking stock market, the outsourcing of jobs, wacko birthers, lack of health care, tent cities, devaluation of the dollar, choking debt, inflation, and–with any luck–revolution.
Aug 3, 2009 - 3:13 pm 11. AF_Vet:“Please God let it be Sarah Palin.
So we can crush her and the GOP.”
Keep dreaming…the way Obambi and the Dems are going, Capt. Kangaroo would win in a landslide.
Aug 3, 2009 - 4:39 pm 12. Войска ПВО:3. urbanleftbehind writes:
“Was the John Kreese reference actually from Karate Kid I or was it in the part of KK II..”
Actually, it was reference made by my wife (of Japanese descent) to the famous member of Monty Python and actor who played Basil Fawltey in Fawlty Towers.
Aug 3, 2009 - 4:59 pm 13. myth buster:I think we should ban Super Tuesday. No more than two contests per week, except in the territories. This allows campaigns time to build grassroots efforts on the ground, which takes the emphasis off of money and places it on the candidate and organization, where it belongs. Party insiders are right to fear a long primary, but not for the reason they tell us- a long primary doesn’t hurt the party’s chances in the general election as long as the contest is civil, but it does strip the power of party insiders who want to anoint the next candidate so they can retain their own power. If anything, a long primary keeps media attention on your candidates for months instead of settling into a summer lull. Most people don’t even pay attention until after the Olympics anyway, so who cares? Even if everybody spent like Mitt Romney, the coffers still will be refilled come September. It’s more important to have a good candidate than to avoid a crazy primary, even if it means a brokered convention.
Aug 3, 2009 - 5:11 pm 14. Adam Graham:In answer to the most pressing question on this thread, Karate Kid II was where Kreese made his statement.
Aug 3, 2009 - 5:16 pm 15. Roark:Romney is the worst possible GOP candidate. That hack gave MA his own state version of socialized medicine Romneycare. Also, during the last Presidential election Romney sounded like a fluffy piece of RINO garbage. If Obamacare becomes law and Romney were to be he next President, do you really think this pompous fake would repeal it??? Not a chance in hell. Romney IS the problem with the GOP; left leaning, spineless BSer’s. The USA needs real men of fortitude who can defend liberty unapologetically. Men like MIKE PENCE or BOB BARR.
Aug 4, 2009 - 9:35 am 16. Paul -Indiana:#12. BTW, sir, that’s Mr. Fawltey to you.
Aug 4, 2009 - 10:18 am 17. johnpeter:Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney have all led trial heats
Aug 5, 2009 - 4:12 am 18. Northern Light:It seems to me that people start predicting the next presidential contest the moment the current one has ended.
Of course from that vantage point, the contenders are usually people who were featured in the previous contest.
Did Dan Quayle ever run in a primary? How about Sgt. Shriver? Both of them were considered contenders after they had failed to be elected Vice-President (Actually, I think Shriver did run in 1976, but he was in single digits).
Of course it’s meat for a political junkie to consider elections so far off in the future, but it’s really silly and meaningless and the smarter junkies know it.
The correct time to start making serious specualtion is just before the Iowa caucuses. I remember in 2008 I had made my predictions just before Iowa and I was pretty sure that Hillary Clinton had what it took to defeat Mitt Romney. The only difference between me and thousands of other political junkies is I have the honesty to remember my past predictions.
Aug 6, 2009 - 8:29 am 19. AST:I’m not sure that Sarah Palin is interested in running for President, although everybody seems to assume that she’s like every other politician.
I think that Romney, Huckabee and Pawlenty are definitely going to run, but there could be someone out there that nobody’s really looked at yet. If there is, though, he/she’d better be organizing now.
I think that Huckabee would be divisive and that Romney would be opposed by the evangelicals in the party because Huckabee’s church has campaigned for 20 years claiming that Mormons aren’t Christians. Also, Romney supported the current health care scheme in Massachusetts which is prominent evidence that Obamacare will be a disaster. He might be able to distinguish his ideas from how MA-care has been run, but it’s a deep hole to climb out of. That being said, I don’t know of anyone else who has demonstrated the ability to reverse financial disasters that he has, but I’ll be surprised if he’s the candidate.
Nov 14, 2009 - 9:08 pm