Wild days begin in Iowa and New Hampshire
A worker adjusts jars filled with corn kernels in the "Cast Your Kernel" election during the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 17, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit: Getty Images / Justin Sullivan
A Catch of the Day to Nate Cohn at the New York Times for warning us that the last month of campaigning in Iowa (Feb. 1 caucuses) and New Hampshire (Feb. 9 primary) can be a time of unpredictable movement in the polls. That’s because, he writes,
“Most voters have still not made up their minds by this stage. After all, this isn’t a general election, when most voters invariably choose the candidate of their party. Most voters like most or even all of the top candidates. Because of that, it doesn’t take much for voters to switch quickly from one candidate to another.”
The outcome, as Cohn documents, is that swings of 20 percentage points or more are common in the final weeks before a vote.
It is understandable that most voters haven’t paid much attention to the Republican contest so far. After all, a lot of the potential decisions — Marco Rubio or Scott Walker? Ted Cruz or Bobby Jindal? Chris Christie or Lindsey Graham? — have already been resolved. People would have wasted time considering them in advance.
A voter who opposes illegal immigration may know now that Donald Trump is the candidate who talks about stopping it. But people will discover, as the election draws closer, that Cruz or another candidate shares that position, and they may change horses with little prompting. Or a voter who supports Cruz for his anti-abortion position will see that other GOP candidates are just as vehement in support of that view.
Yes, voters in Iowa and New Hampshire have already been exposed to information about the candidates. But this will increase in the last few weeks before the caucus or primary, and voters will be more receptive to it.
And the nature of the available information about candidates may change when they launch attacks against one another. Jeb Bush’s super PAC, for example, has begun attacking Marco Rubio. This could hurt Rubio, and could help Bush, but it could also hurt Bush and help some other candidate (Christie? John Kasich?). Or it could even backfire and help Rubio. Good luck trying to predict any of that.
Multicandidate elections without parties or any other fixed allegiances to distinguish among the candidates are inherently unstable. So the next few weeks will be fascinating to watch. Nice catch!
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist covering U.S. politics.
