It’s All But Over in Race for the Nomination
The race for the nominations is just about over. We’ll know the winners by 2 January 2008.
How is that possible? You may begin your investigation by reading my blog essay on the primary instability paradox. Also be sure to read my academic treatment of the same issue.
Unless something drastic changes in the next three weeks, Gallup says it will be Clinton versus Giuliani.
Political prediction is a fool’s game–unless you have a good statistical model (and the right attitude). And William G. Mayer’s model is good, i.e. since 1980 it has predicted the nominee for each party with a high degree of success.
(See also: Mayer, William G. “Forecasting Presidential Nominations or, My Model Worked Just Fine, Thank you.” PS: Political Science & Politics. APSA. 36(2) 2003: 153-57.)
What this means: The race is almost over. What happens in Iowa or New Hampshire or anywhere else is largely meaningless because the people, nationally, tend to vote for the front-runners.
Caveat: Academic models may certainly fail. That, however, doesn’t mean the model is no good. Such an assessment can only be made by considering performance over time. Accurately predicting any particular event merely for the sake of being right is not the point of a statistical model. The point is to help us understand how the world works. Getting it wrong, then, is a good thing because we learn more about how the system works.
What this further means (from my essay in The Forum):
Recent scholarship on the effects of party election reforms in the 1970s demonstrate that the primary election process has become frontloaded (Mayer, 2004). Frontloading occurs as states move primary dates forward in an effort to gain more media attention and political influence in the nomination. Frontloading has stabilized the nomination process by making it a “stacked deck” in favor of a limited set of candidates before any votes are cast (Steger, 2003). Since the reforms fully took effect in 1980, the winner of the “invisible primary,” as determined by polls prior to voting, has eventually won the nomination most of the time (Mayer, 1996, 2003; Gurian & Haynes, 2003). The press, however, covers the nomination process as an unstable event by creating an illusion of political drama in which almost any candidate may rise from the pack to win the nomination or the frontrunner may stumble on political mistakes and lose the nomination (Gurian & Haynes, 2003). This illusion of drama hides from citizens the fact that the process is stable and, therefore, limits voters’ choices—hardly helping them “to control their own destinies.” By characterizing the process as unstable, I contend the press contributes to its stability; thus, the press is complicit in limiting voter choice, a phenomenon I call the primary instability paradox.
Let me make this plain: The story that the press tells about nomination politics does not accurately describe what’s happening. The press is a player in the system and helps determine the nominee before any primary voter ever enters a polling place.
It’s time to tell a different story of politics in America.
“…Joe Biden is now the third best bet for the nomination. I’m hearing a lot of buzz about him from people who pay attention.”
- Chris Matthews, MSNBC (12/10/07)
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Would you say that Unless something drastic changes in the next three weeks has occurred?
It is still a long way (in days, and in polls as well) before Iowa, but I would be surprised if the last national polls from the major polling companies before Iowa all have the same leader, all outside the margin of error. At least on the Republican side.
I have been saying for months that the next President, whoever that will be, will be an exception. The first this, the last that, the only whatever in however many years. This could be one of the exceptional circumstances. But as I asked you (I think) three years ago, one problem with a model that matches something that only happens once every four years, and is based on things that may change more quickly than that, is how you know when it no longer applies.
Please note—I’m not trying to carp about the model or about your larger statement that the story the press tells is not only incomplete but inaccurate and misleading, particularly as regards their own place in the system. More, I’m trying to get your take on how the system (or the noetic field, or more accurately the reported noetic field, the part of the noetic field that is visible to people who read the papers and watch the pictures) is reacting to what is happening.
Thanks,
-V.
V- Good question. The “system” appears to work along the lines of the model. Now that’s certainly not what was intended by the reforms that took effect by 1980.
The system as it appears to be operating is not visible from a surface look–the kind of look you get from the press. And the press plays an uncomfortable role in making this system work as it does.
There are many journalists who are away of the model. They either dismiss it as “not true” (!!!) or treat it as an interesting feature story or odd-ball occurrence. I have yet to hear of or meet any journalist who take it seriously–which would mean adjusting coverage to something that doesn’t help stabilize the system further.
We have a ways to go until that last poll. So, yes, anything can happen now–to a certain extent, anyway.