It figures…
So, I have a busy day–can’t get to my blogging right away–and what happens? Big campaign news.
Howard Dean has been edging closer to a MoE lead in the national polls for a few weeks now. This poll puts him 3 points over the MoE. My guess is Gore’s endorsement will push him several points beyond even this within the next two weeks.
According to the Mayer predictive model of primary campaigns, the leader of the last national Gallup poll before the Iowa caucuses wins the nomination. Changes in “momentum” and specific wins and losses during the primary season are meaningless. The voters, in the aggregate, confirm the national polls. This means the primary contests act more like one election than several. Individual contests have a limited influence on subsequent contests.
Just in case you didn’t know, the preceding paragraph is journalistic heresy. The press will portray the primary process as an unstable event with an uncertain outcome. The truth, according to the Mayer model, is that our current primary system is a stable process with a certain outcome.
I’ll make my formal prediction the day before Iowa, but, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose Dean is the one. How did that choice get made? Who made it? What criteria did they use? For answers to these questions, you may wish to read my essay on the press-politics of primary campaigns (linked above re: Mayer). To discover how the press will waste much of your time during the primaries, read my analysis of a typical horse-race article.
Predictions for Elections, and Thoughts On Howard Dean
As Andrew Cline notes, predictive models have confirmed for decades that whoever is leading in the national polls before an American Presidential primary almost inevitably…