Iowa Straw Poll Winners and Losers

Iowa straw poll winners and losers. Anyone can blog first, but taking a step back, who really won?

Winners:
Mitt Romney: The obvious to start with, seeing as though he actually won. Romney may not have exceeded expectations, but he got the win he needed to have. Seeing as though a loss would have crippled his campaign, even a low-turnout type of win is a plus. There are obviously caveats with his win, though. First, he didn’t inspire any sort of large turnout on his behalf, which probably indicates how tepid his Iowa support is. The second caveat is that his follow up appearance on Fox News Sunday was less than impressive, and may have raised more questions than it answered.

Mike Huckabee: Huckabee finally got the good political result that he needed. This will definitely help his fundraising abilities, which were sorely lacking so far this year. There are two parts to the ‘insurgent campaign’ playbook (can someone please come up with a better name than that?). Part one is doing a lot with little money. Part two is raising more money to really enter the top tier. Howard Dean got noticed with his DNC speech and used that to fundraise really well to enter the top tier. Huckabee’s gotten the hard part done now with finishing ahead of Brownback, but how he capitalizes on it will be the crucial part. The worst case scenario for him, though, is that he is a viable VP candidate that people -especially the GOP base- will respond positively toward. The best case scenario obviously is that he follows the second place finish up with a strong fundraising quarter and emerges as the conservative alternative that many Republicans seem to be looking for.

Republican 504(c)s: This blog entry by Marc Ambinder really paints a clear picture of how Fairtax.org got Huckabee his second place finish. The group even claimed as much responsibility as they legally could for Huckabee doing so well. In the last election 537s were heavily Democratic. What seems really be happening now is that a Republican 504 has made an impact at a grassroots level, and organized around an issue. I have to wonder if other issue oriented groups will take note of the success of Fairtax.org to organize for the caucuses or in future years. If it’s on abortion it could hurt Giuliani or Romney, if it’s on immigration it could hurt Brownback or McCain, etc. The point is that issues that effectively organize independant of the candidates can significantly change results in states like Iowa, and it will be interesting to see how much of that happens in the coming months.

Non-Participatory Campaigns: The attendance of the Straw Poll has to be looked at as indicative of the lack of passion among Iowa voters. Frankly, the excuse making the rounds of the Iowa heat isn’t that convincing. The fact that attendance was so amount higher in 1999 (38k in 99, only 30k this year) when the candidates participating were really only George Bush and others who wouldn’t even consider running this cycle speaks volumes. And that’s not even considering that this elections is really accelerating far faster than the 1999 election, which was really not nearly as far advanced as the 1999 one, and yet still far more people turned out then. If Giuliani, Thompson, or McCain can tap into the disaffect felt towards the candidates, they could really break out front in a hurry. I’m not really anticipating that happening, but it’s within the realm of possibility.

As stated in an article in the Chicago Tribune:

Only 2.5 percent of those considered to be active Republicans took part in the balloting. There also were nearly 10,000 fewer ballots cast Saturday than in the last straw poll in 1999, which was won by then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Romney and Huckabee contended that the heat and oppressive humidity Saturday made it difficult to turn out supporters. Romney also said that because his victory had been expected, some backers didn’t want to travel to Ames.

But the decline in participation tracks with a recent survey that found that fewer than 20 percent of Iowa Republicans were “very satisfied” with their choice of contenders.

Losers:

Republican Party: See above. This turnout isn’t a good thing. It’s important to remember how super charged the 2004 election was. Even with a candidate most Democrats were not excited about, the election had a record high turnout to vote against Bush, and it took an even greater turnout to get Bush re-elected. It looks like it’s going to be similar for Republicans this time at this point as it was for Democrats, as the turnout essentially confirms the general malaise towards the candidates that had previously been more or less assumed through polls. It will be interesting to see if the malaise goes away by the time the primaries gear up, and if Republicans can overcome their malaise to get a high turnout in the general election the same way Democrats did in 2004. I imagine that voting against Clinton will help a lot in that regard, should she in fact get nominated.

Non-participatory campaigns: While they win in some ways, they also lose in some other ways. The most dedicated of Iowa Republicans are the ones who showed up, and they are also the ones who were spurned by the campaigns who elected to not participate, and there’s no guarantee those voters will be receptive to the Thompson, Giuliani, or even McCain campaigns come December and January.

Sam Brownback: Brownback was in a race to beat Huckabee, and lost that race, no matter how close it was. It’s going to be a tough sell for him to get any bounce from the result. Considering his financial advantage and his advantage in visiting Iowa as much as he has, 32 times since 2004 compared to 19 times for Huckabee according to Iowapolitics.com. He’s not out of the race, but he’ll need to have something happen between now and January in order to be a factor in the caucuses.

Tommy Thompson: Finished sixth, dropped out. Given how much he campaigned in Iowa, it’s no surprise he dropped out when he finished so low.

Duncan Hunter: He’s essentially the only remaining candidate who was there who will be inable to spin his results in a positive manner. It’s not a failure of ideas for Hunter, but essentially a complete political failure. His only campaigning has been in the debates, and it’s hard to really say he’s taking this run seriously. Hunter’s only chance at this point is to pick an early state and go all out for the win, like McCain did in New Hampshire in 2000 or Kerry did in Iowa in 2004. Even then, it might be far too late in this race for that strategy to work. I have to wonder what he would have done had he run a campaign like Tommy Thompson did, instead of barely making any appearances in the state at all.

Tom Tancredo: Finishing behind Brownback was a blow, and really hurts his ability to portray himself as a viable conservative alternative. There were some who thought he could emerge like Huckabee has, but finishing behind two candidates fighting to be the social conservative alternative and also finishing behind Mitt Romney puts him pretty far back with still only one issue to make traction on.

Iowa Straw Poll: Very little good things happen when events are ignored and then ill-attended. It’s foolish to make predictions of what is going to happen 4 or 8 years down the line, but there are signals that perhaps the straw poll will become less important instead of more important. Self-selecting straw polls built on campaign money might not be the best way for candidates to spend their money and time in an era of more and more public polling being available. The poll clearly had some uses … but was it necessary with this campaign schedule? I don’t claim to know the answer, but I do know that the answer isn’t obvious.