Title says it all; how predictive has Iowa been of the results in the general election?
I know it mattered not to Clinton (Bill) and Reagan. What’s the history?
“The History” is the first major paragraph of this Wikipedia article. If you scroll down there’s a list of past winners with the party’s eventual nominee in boldface, and the eventual President in boldface italics. For Republicans, Iowa seems key to winning the nomination. For Democrats, our last three Presidents won in Iowa if you count Clinton running unopposed for reelection, but then-Governor Clinton came in third in Iowa (fourth, if you count losing to “Unopposed”). Before that, it’s a mixed bag.
Iowa isn’t going to be so important because “super Tuesday” is so close now. Even if a dark horse had won, there isn’t enough time to raise the money between now and early February. Iowa means nothing.
Actually, the assertion is being made by many that Iowa has gained in importance, because there no longer is any significant time after it for candidates to recover before the next contest. This makes the result for Obama more important, because it means that the vote in New Hampshire will come while he is still riding the crest of the wave of publicity and popularity created by the win in Iowa.
And, following through on that line of reasoning, if he wins NH, he has then won in two predominantly white states, and goes quickly into SC and a theoretically “energized” black vote.
Obama isn’t a dark horse. His money is up there with Clinton’s. His win in Iowa is no more important than a win by Clinton or Edwards would have been. Unless, of course, if we keep saying it’s important, over and over again.
There aren’t enough Iowa caucuses to really be able to come up with a general pattern, especially since most of them have some other interesting circumstance in Iowa. Like so-and-so didn’t campaign, and such. And any case where there was a clear front-runner who won Iowa then ended up with the nomination is pretty useless.
Ultimately, nominations are a social phenomena. if people beleive Iowa has predicitve power, it WILL have predicitve power. if not, not.
I’m no pro at this, but my take is Iowa is becoming less important, and if the eventual nominees are other than Obama & Huckabee, Iowa will recede to the irrelevance it deserves come 2012.