Dr. Charles Bullock:

Putting Iowa and New Hampshire In Perspective

By Dr. Charles S. Bullock III

(12/27/07) Iowa and New Hampshire will soon lapse back into cornfields and snow banks for another four years. The presidential selection process is about to move on to larger, more representative venues. But by the time the media focuses on other states, the two at the front of the selection queue will have reduced the field of competitors and have initiated the deathwatch for some candidacies despite their protestations of continued viability.

It is a very small tail that wags the dog when it comes to choosing the leader of the free world. In 2004, 124,331 Iowans participated in the caucus that sounded the death knell of the candidacy of Howard Dean who had led the pack seeking the Democratic nomination. To put the number of Iowa Democrats in perspective, that is 6,000 fewer votes than Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin got from DeKalb County when winning reelection in 2006.

John Kerry won the Iowa caucuses by taking 38 percent of the delegates compared with 32 percent for John Edwards. While the process by which participation in the caucuses translates into delegates is complex – far too complex to be detailed here and, consequently, the computation that follows does some injustice to the process – 38 percent of the participants in the caucuses translates into fewer than 50,000. The Kerry vote was slightly more than the 2006 turnout in Clayton or Richmond counties and a little less than in Cherokee County.

The primary selection process used in New Hampshire is much less time consuming than Iowa caucusing. Voting in the New Hampshire, like in Georgia, requires that one spend only a few minutes in the voting booth while an Iowa caucus meeting can last for hours. Not surprisingly, since it demands much less of voters, although New Hampshire has less than half the population of Iowa, its 2004 presidential primary attracted far more participants, almost 220,000. In this election that added momentum to the Kerry bandwagon, the Democratic turnout equaled the vote that Mark Taylor collected in his 2006 gubernatorial bid from DeKalb and Fulton counties. John Kerry claimed his New Hampshire victory with 84,377 votes or 38 percent of the total. That is roughly four percent of the vote cast by Georgians in the 2006 election.

The parties have finally acknowledged the unrepresentative makeup of the electorate in these two states that launch the presidential selection process. Iowa’s 2000 population was 92.6 percent white while New Hampshire was even whiter – 95.1 percent.

To allow a more diverse set of voters to get in on the early action, Democrats slated Nevada and South Carolina to vote in January ahead of mega-Tuesday on February 5, the day that Georgia votes. Nevada, which will vote in caucus, has a population that is between that of Iowa and New Hampshire and will likely have few voters. Compared to the other three, South Carolina, with more than four million people is huge. Since it uses a primary, it may have more participants than the other three states combined.

Florida and Michigan, two states with sizable populations, have tried to sneak into the limelight by moving their primaries into January. The parties have threatened to disallow the delegates selected in these states, which the party rules banned from voting until after February 1. The threats to punish these states and candidates who compete in them have discouraged campaigning in these states. Consequently while those states have large numbers of voters and diverse populations, their results may be inconsequential.

Because of their size and diversity, Florida and Michigan could provide valuable insights into the soul of the American voter if the candidates lavished attention on them. A trend apparent in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina – the states in which candidates have spent the most time – is that Obama is surging while Clinton struggles to hold on to a lead that has eroded to paper thinness. Early polls invariably show candidates who already have name recognition doing well while newcomers score poorly. But new faces who have the money to mount a serious campaign and who have a message that resonates gain ground at the expense of the early frontrunner. That seems to be what is happening the states in which Oprah Winfrey campaigned for Obama.

A somewhat similar but more complicated switch is playing out among Republicans. In Iowa and South Carolina Mike Huckabee is surging at the expense of Mitt Romney in Iowa and Fred Thompson in South Carolina. New Hampshire Republicans are forsaking Romney but for the familiar face of John McCain rather than for a newcomer.

As a neighboring state, results from South Carolina may foreshadow what takes place in Georgia in February. On the Democratic side, support for Barak Obama is growing. With African Americans likely to cast most of the votes in the South Carolina Democratic primary, it is likely that the Illinois senator will come in first. Among Republicans, Huckabee is riding a strong up arrow.

The black percentage in Georgia is just slightly less than in the Palmetto State. African Americans may dominate Georgia’s February Democratic vote and if not, they will come close to being the majority. The latest InsiderAdvantage poll shows Obama leading Hillary Clinton among Georgia Democrats by a narrow 33 – 31 margin, a result well within the poll’s + 4 percent margin of error. It is likely, however, that Obama’s performance will outdistance his poll numbers. The InsiderAdvantage poll shows almost one in five black voters still undecided. Once those voters make up their minds, they are likely to go for Obama who already leads Clinton by about 2:1 among black voters.

For Obama to best Clinton in South Carolina and Georgia would not be surprising. Twenty years ago Jesse Jackson carried Georgia along with Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia in the first Super Tuesday. (In 1988 South Carolina Democrats used the caucus approach.)

While it seems likely that the Democratic contest will contract to a two-person contest before Georgia votes, the Republican options may be more extensive. Huckabee has burst into the top-tier of candidates and leads in Iowa, South Carolina, and. according to the InsiderAdvantage poll, in Georgia. National figures show Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani bunched with Huckabee.

Huckabee’s star has risen as former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson’s has waned. Until he formally entered the race the Tennessean seemed to be the answer to the prayers of religious conservatives unhappy with the options offered by McCain, Romney and Giuliani. But then Thompson’s performance in debates and on the hustings proved far less impressive than voters had come to expect from television and the big screen. In all likelihood much of Huckabee’s newfound popularity stems from the attachment of former Thompson fans augmented by conservatives who distrust the recent conversions of Giuliani and Romney.

Turnout in Georgia on February 5 will exceed that of any of the four early states sanctioned by the parties. Nonetheless those who vote in Georgia will share an important characteristic with Iowa and Nevada caucus goers and New Hampshire and South Carolina primary participants. In every instance those who turn out to select presidential nominees disproportionately come from the ranks of strong partisans. Given the longer time that the caucuses demand of participants, the threshold of party interest and commitment to a particular candidate is greater in Iowa and Nevada than in a primary state like Georgia. But in every instance those who select the delegates whose votes will determine partisan presidential nominees are committed partisans and thus not representative of the broader electorate. A potential problem is that a party’s staunchest supporters rally to the flag of a contender who proves unable to broaden the appeal so as to attract enough Independents and weak partisans to win in November.