What Does Iowa Mean to New Hampshire?

29.12.2007

Interesting debate in comments about Noam's item on post-Iowa scenarios for Clinton, Obama and Edwards. Commenter liebeg contends that "people are overgeneralizing from the 2004 experience," when John Kerry's Iowa win instantly rocketed him from hoplessness to victory in New Hampshire.

Here's an argument for why that may be true. Recall that Kerry didn't just unexpectedly beat Howard Dean in Iowa. Something else happened: Dean screamed. Dean's Iowa concession speech turned into one of the greatest political fiascos in a generation, winning him days of coverage that made him look like an unhinged freak. I have zero interest in re-opening the debate about whether The Scream was a media fabrication, but the fact remains that it wound up defining Dean to disastrous effect.

I'm not quite willing to argue that without The Scream Dean could've come back to beat Kerry. But it's still worth remembering the context of Kerry's post-Iowa romp before simply assuming this season's Iowa winner will repeat it.

[Idea partially stolen from NBC's Chuck Todd, whom I recently heard discussing Dean's '04 collapse on the radio.]

--Michael Crowley

Posted: Saturday, December 29, 2007 7:46 PM with 4 comment(s)

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liebig said:

I'd take it one step further, just to play devil's advocate. Can we rule out the possibility that Iowa had almost *no* effect on New Hampshire in 2004? In other words, might New Hampshire have come around to Kerry even if there were no Iowa caucuses? Maybe any state-ful of Democrats, subject to the same set of heavy-spending candidates touting the same set of messages, would end up in roughly the same place by election day -- but that it would just start happening a little bit later in a state whose election day comes a little later. Since most of the shift to Kerry in Iowa happened in the last few weeks before the caucuses, maybe the same thing would have happened in New Hampshire -- but you wouldn't be able to notice it happening until after the caucuses had made the headlines. It would be interesting to know what the New Hampshire polling trends showed in the week or so leading up to the Iowa caucuses . . .

In other words, shouldn't we at least consider whether the media is mistaking correlation for causation? It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

December 29, 2007 8:39 PM

Of course, if that hypothesis were true, Iowa would still be a decent *predictor* of later states, just not a cause.

December 29, 2007 8:40 PM

virginiacentrist said:

Every time Hillary opens her mouth, it's basically a Dean scream...in my opinion...she is so horrible as a speaker...

All the media needs to do is interview her on Jan 3rd in the evening...

December 30, 2007 12:45 AM

mmathog said:

virginiacentrist has feelings, how nice.

I doubt the dean scream had the effect on dean Crowley says it did although yes it's coverage was appalling.

I've been an Obama supporter all the way, but unlike virginiacentrist, I don't project my own feelings toward a candidate onto the entire electorate. For whatever reason, a whole lot of Dem voters have taken a nice long look and many claim they still will pull the lever for HRC.

I'm more interested in data than feelings.

December 30, 2007 2:20 PM