I’m a little frustrated that the calendar of Republican primaries and caucuses is still so uncertain. It makes it impossible to try to game out how the nominating contest might unfold. I like Nate Silver’s piece on the Perry-Romney dynamic in the early states, but I’d like to be able to roll it forward with more confidence. All we know with any degree of confidence is that Iowa will go first and be followed by New Hampshire, and then by South Carolina and Nevada (the last two, possibly on the same day). I don’t want to discuss why things are so unsettled, but it probably won’t surprise you that Florida is at fault.
In any case, I don’t think anyone thinks that Mitt Romney is going to win the Iowa Caucuses, and that’s why Romney isn’t seriously competing there. It’s like when you know you girlfriend is going to break up with you. You break up with her first, or you act like you really don’t care. I’ve never known that strategy to be particularly convincing, but I also don’t think Romney has a better alternative.
What Nate wants to know is if anyone will want to date Romney in New Hampshire after he’s been dumped in the Hawkeye State. The problem is that if a conservative (right now, most likely to be Rick Perry) knocks a bunch of other conservatives out of the race in Iowa, Romney could see his poll lead in the Granite State evaporate. Romney can beat four or six or eight conservatives who are all splitting the hard right vote. If he has to match up against only two or three conservative opponents, he might be screwed.
As noted above, it is not possible to game out the GOP nominating process without a firm calendar, but we do know a few things.
Romney will start the process with a lot of money. Ron Paul will have a good amount of money, too, and will benefit from the fact that the early contests will not be winner-take-all. I think Paul can reliably win 10%-20% of the vote in almost every state in the Union. Early on, he will accrue delegates, and he will have staying power. Michele Bachmann should have enough money and supporters to carry her through the first four contests, but she’ll need to have some success to compete beyond that. Rick Perry should be well funded for as long as it takes for him to either win or completely bomb out. All other challengers will need to vastly exceed expectations to get beyond Iowa. As for Palin, I’d say there is nothing we can say with confidence.
Let’s look at what this means for the night of the Iowa Caucuses.
As of today, it looks like a contest between Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. Should anyone else win, it would be a total game changer. If Romney won, he would probably walk to the nomination, but that is a very unlikely outcome. If Gingrich or Cain or Huntsman or Paul or Santorum or Palin or anyone else were to win, they’d be propelled to the front of the pack and the whole dynamic of the race would change. As for the top two, Perry could plausibly knock Bachmann out of the race but I don’t think the reverse is true.
Aside from who will be the winner, on the night of the Iowa Caucuses, people will be looking at the second, third, and fourth place finishers. And everything will be judged according to how they did compared to expectations (the polls). The also-ran candidates can get a major boost by unexpectedly finishing in second place. If Perry beats a second-place Bachmann and she drops out of the race, a third-place finish can become quite valuable. Finally, it matters how badly Romney does. If he’s really in the basement, it could hurt his chances in New Hampshire. On the other hand, if finishing badly allows a conservative fourth-place finisher to soldier on to New Hampshire, it could help him.
Let’s imagine two plausible scenarios.
Scenario One
Iowa Results: 1. Rick Perry 2. Michele Bachmann 3. Ron Paul 4. Mitt Romney.
If common wisdom had been that Bachmann had to win, she might drop out. With none of the other long-shot candidates having broken through, most or all of them would drop out too. And their support would be dead anyway. We’d be going to New Hampshire with it basically a three-way race between Romney, Perry, and Paul. This could be a nightmare for Romney, as he needs the conservative vote to be split more than two ways.
Scenario Two
Iowa Results: 1. Michele Bachmann 2. Rick Perry 3. Ron Paul 4. Rick Santorum.
This would boost Bachmann into super-stardom, but it probably would not overly discourage Perry. The breakthrough for Santorum (or any other also-ran) would give them a bit of momentum. And Romney would look really weak and discredited. Yet, facing three conservative challengers might be enough to put Romney over the top in New Hampshire, and he could count on winning the Nevada Caucuses due to his appeal among Mormons. He might win two of the first four contests and two of the three he seriously contested.
This second scenario could lead to a protracted campaign and even a brokered convention. Bachmann, Paul, Romney, and Perry would continue to win delegates in proportional fashion, with no one racking up large advantages, and no one even coming close to winning a majority of the delegates. All four of them could raise enough money to limp along but none of them could attain a war chest adequate to knock the others out.
If this happens, this most likely scenario, it seems to me, is that Romney would have the most delegates but that, combined, Bachmann, Perry, and Paul would have a majority. And that means that Romney would not prevail at the convention.
I’ll tell you one thing. This contest could be over in a flash or it could be like nothing we’ve ever seen.
Rick Perry’s the cool guy in the room right now. I wonder if Rove’s kneecapping efforts will have an effect. I have a feeling Bachmann will bleed even more support to Perry because people just see him as an even better, more electable version of her.
I don’t think Romney can play as well in the gutter with those people.
Offtopic: What’s the deal with Obama’s approval ratings? I gather that’s mostly due to a drop in support from Democrats and independents.
Offtopic: I think it’s for the economy and unemployment sucking for as long as it has. I’m surprised he didn’t enter the 30’s much sooner. It took Reagan, Clinton, and Carter only a couple of years. Ontopic: I think Romney is going to be fighting for his life politically. Anything’s possible. The first George Bush got pretty mean and nasty and shocked most people in ’88.
I originally said when I predicted Bachmann would win the whole enchilada that this prediction would change entirely should Perry jump in. Well now that he’s jumped in, I really don’t know where things are going until they get closer. Polling tells me right now that Bachmann is toast, but I still do not think Perry “has it”.
Also, I think Romney comes in third in Iowa no matter what. Other than that, I agree with what you’ve written.
Oh cool, as I typed this, we had another earthquake.
I think it’s underestimated how much Paul is going to fuck things up for these guys. He’s going to be stronger this time than he was last time. He’s still not going to win but definitely will play the role of spoiler.
Oh yeah, this was a great post. You seem to be very interested in gaming out all these various scenarios.
The Republican base seems to want a conservative and they want someone who can win; they see that in Perry with his jobs message and his faith and batshit Bachmann like ways.
I think Perry will pull out Iowa; that state isn’t friendly to female politicos and then Romney will likely have a two way race in NH with Paul cutting mostly from his own vote.
And then, even if he wins, he has to be wounded by the calendar and the fact the south will likely shut him out.
The length of the candidate’s campaign directly depends on the depth of his/her contributors’ pockets. Until we know where the money is flowing post Perry, you cannot game it out before January.
And the actions of Congress and the state of the economy between September and January will affect the public mood.
I wouldn’t waste my time trying to game it out before mid-October.
squarely on the head. From the NYT
In short – no leadership.
The recent bus tour fell flat only if you think it was a campaign tour and not a listening tour. To figure out where people really are in their thinking instead of depending on biased journalists, Village-imbibing staff, or irrelevant polls to tell him. Because it is becoming clear that the public is not responding like the pundits have been driving policy. Of course we’ve known this from 2009, but any president lives in a bubble separate from the people he met and who voted to elect him.
If it turns out it wasn’t a listening tour, and we’ll know in September or October, then Obama is in serious electoral trouble.
Can this administration make some serious mid-course corrections?
the only thing people are passionate about when it comes to Mittens is that his checks clear.
period.
there is no passion for his candidacy.
I’m waiting for him to actually stand up to Governor Good Hair. I do wonder what he’ll do in the next GOP Debate.
Mittens is ditching Climate Change
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/mitt-romney-backs-away-from-climate-change.php
I think Nate has overrated the importance of both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. Before imagining a scenario for 2012, why not just recall what happened in 2008:
IA: Huckabee 34.4%, Romney 25.2%, Thompson 13.4%, McCain 13.1%, Paul 10.0%, Guiliani 3.5%, Hunter 0.4%, Tancredo 0.0%.
NH: McCain 37.1%, Romney 31.6%, Huckabee 11.2%, Giuliani 8.6%, Paul 7.7 %, Thompson 1.2%, Hunter 0.5%, Keyes 0.1%, Tancredo 0.0%
It doesn’t look to me like Iowa predicted anything about the New Hampshire vote in 2008. And while Romney lost New Hampshire, he continued to run until Super Tuesday, when over half the states had voted. At that point McCain had won 11 states, Romney had won 11 and Huckabee 7. Nobody cared who had won Iowa or New Hampshire, as long as their favorite was still in the contest. Each candidate won where he was regionally strongest. McCain swept all but one of the remaining states after Romney quit.
This year Super Tuesday is March 6th and Utah votes on March 13th. Romney’s not going to drop out before then.
Notice too, that in 2008 Huckabee was the only real social conservative in the race. McCain and Romney were competing for a lot of the same votes. This year Romney pretty much has the “moderate-insider” track to himself.