January 18, 2004
Iowa Caucus
So, tomorrow is the big day - the Iowa caucus, the first state to go on record for who should be the Democratic nominee to beat Bush.The history is that Gephardt led for a long time, and then Dean started his letter-writing campaign. Right around the Gore endorsement, Dean had a huge leap and led convincingly. Kerry was tanking in New Hampshire and decided to focus his efforts on Iowa, and has experienced a resurgence. Edwards campaign has had a resurgence also, but since he's supposed to be strong in the South, his campaign wouldn't be judged to be doomed if he came in third or fourth in Iowa.
All the late polls show everyone bunched up together, with Kerry having a lead. It looked like Dean was losing support midweek, even being in third place for a time, but has since built up support again and is now a close second.
Now, these are the polls. And that's where it starts to fall apart.
Most polls are done by focusing on probable and likely voters. And here's the key - they all make judgments on who these voters are - previous caucus attenders, registered Democrats that obviously have registered long enough ago that the polls know who they are. The assumption - the idiotic, ignorant assumption - that the press keeps on making in their headlines is that Iowa's population as a whole will vote in a way that relates to how they voted four years ago.
So the obvious question is... why wouldn't this be true? How is 2004 different than 2000?
Dean. Dean. Dean. Dean. Dean.
Dean has spent months writing letters to undecided voters. Close to 300,000 of them. Record turnout in the Iowa caucuses is 120,000. The polls focus on past caucus voters. Dean's lists - both for letter-writing, and for the huge vote-canvassing drive he's organized for out-of-state visitors - is from the Secretary Of State's voter rolls, both Democrats and Independents.
There's one more statistic here. Campaigns rate their voters on a one-to-five scale. Ones are those that have communicated to the campaign that they are definitely going to vote for their guy.
The Dean campaign let slip that 60-65% of their Ones are people that have not caucused before.
There are many ratios we do not know here. We do not know what a "normal" percentage of new caucus goers is. But we do know that 60-65% made serious buzz in Iowa. But the implication of these polls is that there is a ratio of predictable voters (past history) to new voters, and that this ratio will be the same for all candidates.
We already know this to be untrue in Dean's case. We already know that Dean will outperform his polling numbers, and we already know that the polls are not attempting to take this into account.
We know that the record caucus turnout is 120k. We know that Gephardt is saying that his Ones numbers 35k in number. We know that Dean is saying that his Ones number between 40k and 50k. And we know that they are polling around 20% apiece.
I think we are in for a huge surprise tomorrow night. I hate predictions because it's so easy to look like an idiot later, but I think Dean is going to win convincingly. My prediction over at dailykos is:
- Dean 36%
- Gep 24%
- Ker 22%
- Edw 19%
- Gep 24%