Read more: The US primaries: a political failure
Read more: US Presidential race: could Marco Rubio beat Hillary Clinton?
In the numerology of election politics, no statistics are so ripe for plucking and masticating as those harvested in Iowa, the strangely unknowable heart of the country, with its vast rippling corn fields and obliterating sky, its tradition of high literacy and low unemployment—and its caucus, the first main event on the presidential election calendar.
For many years no one paid much attention to the Iowa caucus—a head-counting, mid-season ritual performed in church basements, schoolrooms, and meeting halls. It was the New Hampshire primary that traditionally starts the campaign season. But in 1976, Iowa moved the caucus up to the beginning of the season, ahead of New Hampshire.
That year Jimmy Carter, an obscure evangelical from Georgia, broke through, against a field of better known Democrats. Four years later, George H. W. Bush defeated the favorite Ronald Reagan in Iowa and eventually got on to Reagan’s ticket and from there to the White House. In 2008, Barack Obama stunned Hillary Clinton and didn’t look back.
But political lore isn’t always so straightforward as it seems. Carter, few recall, didn’t actually win in 1976; he finished a distant second, ten points behind “uncommitted.” Only later did it become clear that Democrats in 1976 were in search of the novelty Carter offered by virtue of his near-anonymity. Bush and Obama, in their time, had the advantage of being taken lightly by their better-known rivals.
How, then, to interpret Monday’s results? Ted Cruz’s percentage, 27.6 per cent, was exactly the same as Carter’s. The difference this time is that there are no unknowns any longer—not in the age of social media, around-the-clock cable TV chatter, and TV debates presented as reality series, down to mood music, traded insults and “partnerships” with Youtube and Facebook.
The most useful datum is that Cruz and the second and third place finishers, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, together got 75 per cent of the vote, enough to create a three-man race heading into New Hampshire, where (of course) everything could change.
Under normal conditions, Rubio’s powerful late surge—he had been polling in the mid-teens—would seem to have put him in a good position. He is, moreover, the clear favorite of the establishment triad: party chieftains, super-rich donors, and conservative pundits. If he does well again in New Hampshire pressure will mount for the wheezy also-rans in “the establishment lane”— Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich—to drop out and clear the cinders for Rubio, lest the two wild men, the rabble-rousers Cruz and Trump, thunder ahead in a two-horse race that could well doom the party to overwhelming defeat in November. Already, the prospect of a Cruz victory has some Republicans making worried comparisons with Barry Goldwater, the right-wing outlier who captured the nomination in 1964 but then went down to a historic defeat in the general election.
The Democrats, meanwhile, should be gloating, but are not. They too seem to be staring at anarchy, after the dark horse Bernie Sanders fought Hillary Clinton to a draw—an unthinkable outcome last spring when Sanders quixotically declared his candidacy. At the time he seemed a weak substitute for the populist heartthrob Elizabeth Warren, who resisted pleas to enter the race because it was Clinton’s “turn.” But Sanders saw no reason to defer. For one thing, he’s not a Democrat. He represents Vermont in the Senate as an “independent” and calls himself a “democratic socialist.” Add to that his lumbering Brooklyn accent, and his age, 74, and he is, in many respects, the most improbable candidate in modern memory.
Yet he captured almost 50 per cent of the Democratic vote in Iowa, and his growing support comes from the enormous Millennial cohort coveted by both parties. In Iowa, Sanders “crushed Clinton by an almost unimaginable six to one—84 per cent to 14 per cent—among voters younger than 30,” the journalist Ronald Brownstein reported on the Atlantic website, adding, “for those tempted to dismiss that as just a campus craze, he also routed her by 58 per cent to 37 per cent among those aged 30 to 44.” He is also leading Clinton in New Hampshire polls. But then so was Barack Obama in 2008, when Clinton surprised him and rescued her candidacy.
This election, like every other in recent times, will be decided by turnout. In 2012 less than 60 per cent of eligible voters bothered to do it. The same could happen this year. Politics as circus can be fun to watch, but alienating in the manner of a Brecht play: what happens onstage seems to have nothing to do with our actual lives.
Read more: US Presidential race: could Marco Rubio beat Hillary Clinton?
In the numerology of election politics, no statistics are so ripe for plucking and masticating as those harvested in Iowa, the strangely unknowable heart of the country, with its vast rippling corn fields and obliterating sky, its tradition of high literacy and low unemployment—and its caucus, the first main event on the presidential election calendar.
For many years no one paid much attention to the Iowa caucus—a head-counting, mid-season ritual performed in church basements, schoolrooms, and meeting halls. It was the New Hampshire primary that traditionally starts the campaign season. But in 1976, Iowa moved the caucus up to the beginning of the season, ahead of New Hampshire.
That year Jimmy Carter, an obscure evangelical from Georgia, broke through, against a field of better known Democrats. Four years later, George H. W. Bush defeated the favorite Ronald Reagan in Iowa and eventually got on to Reagan’s ticket and from there to the White House. In 2008, Barack Obama stunned Hillary Clinton and didn’t look back.
But political lore isn’t always so straightforward as it seems. Carter, few recall, didn’t actually win in 1976; he finished a distant second, ten points behind “uncommitted.” Only later did it become clear that Democrats in 1976 were in search of the novelty Carter offered by virtue of his near-anonymity. Bush and Obama, in their time, had the advantage of being taken lightly by their better-known rivals.
How, then, to interpret Monday’s results? Ted Cruz’s percentage, 27.6 per cent, was exactly the same as Carter’s. The difference this time is that there are no unknowns any longer—not in the age of social media, around-the-clock cable TV chatter, and TV debates presented as reality series, down to mood music, traded insults and “partnerships” with Youtube and Facebook.
The most useful datum is that Cruz and the second and third place finishers, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, together got 75 per cent of the vote, enough to create a three-man race heading into New Hampshire, where (of course) everything could change.
Under normal conditions, Rubio’s powerful late surge—he had been polling in the mid-teens—would seem to have put him in a good position. He is, moreover, the clear favorite of the establishment triad: party chieftains, super-rich donors, and conservative pundits. If he does well again in New Hampshire pressure will mount for the wheezy also-rans in “the establishment lane”— Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich—to drop out and clear the cinders for Rubio, lest the two wild men, the rabble-rousers Cruz and Trump, thunder ahead in a two-horse race that could well doom the party to overwhelming defeat in November. Already, the prospect of a Cruz victory has some Republicans making worried comparisons with Barry Goldwater, the right-wing outlier who captured the nomination in 1964 but then went down to a historic defeat in the general election.
The Democrats, meanwhile, should be gloating, but are not. They too seem to be staring at anarchy, after the dark horse Bernie Sanders fought Hillary Clinton to a draw—an unthinkable outcome last spring when Sanders quixotically declared his candidacy. At the time he seemed a weak substitute for the populist heartthrob Elizabeth Warren, who resisted pleas to enter the race because it was Clinton’s “turn.” But Sanders saw no reason to defer. For one thing, he’s not a Democrat. He represents Vermont in the Senate as an “independent” and calls himself a “democratic socialist.” Add to that his lumbering Brooklyn accent, and his age, 74, and he is, in many respects, the most improbable candidate in modern memory.
Yet he captured almost 50 per cent of the Democratic vote in Iowa, and his growing support comes from the enormous Millennial cohort coveted by both parties. In Iowa, Sanders “crushed Clinton by an almost unimaginable six to one—84 per cent to 14 per cent—among voters younger than 30,” the journalist Ronald Brownstein reported on the Atlantic website, adding, “for those tempted to dismiss that as just a campus craze, he also routed her by 58 per cent to 37 per cent among those aged 30 to 44.” He is also leading Clinton in New Hampshire polls. But then so was Barack Obama in 2008, when Clinton surprised him and rescued her candidacy.
This election, like every other in recent times, will be decided by turnout. In 2012 less than 60 per cent of eligible voters bothered to do it. The same could happen this year. Politics as circus can be fun to watch, but alienating in the manner of a Brecht play: what happens onstage seems to have nothing to do with our actual lives.
