Here’s the form book:
On the Democrat side, the previous three winners all went on to be their party’s nominee. It’s five out of seven overall since 1980.
On the Republican side, the previous four winners all went on to be their party’s nominee, and again it’s five out of seven since 1980.
If you look at only those contests where there was no incumbent President or Vice-President standing (as was the case yesterday for both sides), then the Iowa winner went on to be their party’s nominee four out of seven times overall: Reagan lost in 1980 to HW Bush, Dole won in 1996, GW Bush won in 2000; Mondale won in 1984, Dukakis lost to Gephardt in 1988, Clinton lost to Harkin in 1992, Kerry won in 2004.
Other notable comments from around the blogs: Winners and Losers on Freethink, a typically lively comment thread on Political Betting, the implications for racism in the US on Dizzy Thinks, the impact of young voters on Daily Kos, another round up – this time with speech extracts – on Easter Lemming and then there’s the really big question.
UPDATE: And now, the elephant has spoken.
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6 Comments
Only one person in history, who was a non-incumbent, has won the Iowa caucus and gone on to win the General Election.
That man was George W Bush!
Harkin was a native son and thus an outlier. I think the real score is 4 out of 6.
I love these caucuses, especially the Democrat ones where people debate and move between the candidates. Maybe we should incorporate them somehow.
Huckabee, an Anglo-Saxon conservative Christian, did well to win in a mainly German, “moderate” Christian state.
He will be flattened in New Hampshire, where religion is weak, but will win almost everywhere in the South. I cannot imagine he will do well in the urban North-East or California, when those states come up.
If the “mainstream” Republican contenders were more impressive, Huckabee wouldn’t get a look in.
The party elite appears to be backing Romney, but there is no way they are going to get the Republican rural Evangelical base to accept a Mormon.
On the Democrat side, how is it that the entire party establishment failed to do it for Hillary Clinton?
The caucus sounds very nutty to me in a electoral system that is actually worst than ours (in terms that no one can really break the 2 party hold – and you need to be rich to win). Do those voting have to be party members? Surely voting should be anonymous – otherwise people maybe cajoled unwillingly to vote for a candidate not of their choice by their family or peers.
of course it matters. I find both Obama and Edwards very inspirational. Look forward to seeing/hearing similiar performances from our our own inspirational leader in coming weeks, months and years. As for the significance of Iowa. I think this is the most open election for years and we should read too much into past spoils. The increase in turnout can’t be a bad thing in terms of the knock-on effect it might have over here.