The 2012 Iowa Caucuses

Well, Ron Paul didn’t win Iowa, so I guess the caucuses are still allowed to matter to the media. But what a wild ride it was. The final results, via fivethirtyeight:

Romney	30,015	24.6%
Santorum	30,007	24.5
Paul	26,219	21.4
Gingrich	16,251	13.3
Perry	12,604	10.3
Bachmann	6,073	5.0
Huntsman	745	0.6
No Preference	135	0.1
Other	117	0.1
Cain	58	0.1
Roemer	31	0.0

Early results looked like a three-way tie, and then Romney and Santorum began to pull slightly away from Paul. They remained neck-and-neck for the remainder of the evening, with Romney ahead by 13, then down by 79, and so on. When I went to bed 96% of precincts were in and Santorum was up by just over 100 votes. I woke up to learn that Santorum was up by four little votes before the report of the very last precinct, which put Romney over the edge by a mere eight votes out of over 120,000 cast.

From a nerdy statistics standpoint, this was the type of astonishingly close nail-biter that makes for good Hollywood. The irony of it all is that the closeness of this race was inversely proportional to its importance – in my opinion – even though it’s going to be used as evidence of the “importance of every vote” for quite awhile. The media is full of the sort of vacuous commentary which annoys me by presenting silly speculations about who has momentum and who’s going to do what next instead of giving us useful information about the things that have been happening. All I need to know is that Huccabee won Iowa in 2008 and that meant basically nothing about a month later. So instead of pretending I can predict what last night’s results mean, I’m just going to write about the things that happened which I thought were the most interesting…

1. Ron Paul placed a solid third with 21%, more than doubling his fifth-place haul from 2008. I find it amazing that commentators are still using the word “ceiling” to describe Paul’s support, even though the “peak Paul” theory has been disproven multiple times already. Clearly there is a peak somewhere, but, like oil, there’s no inherent reason to believe that anyone knows where that peak is.

2. Romney actually received a smaller percentage of votes this year than he did four years ago when he placed second with 25.2%. This suggests that despite the splintered field right now, there were actually more “anti-Romney” votes cast this time than last time. Still, it remains true that Romney performed fairly well in the type of very conservative state where he is not “strong.” He is widely expected to win New Hampshire next Tuesday, and he’s gotta be happy about the prospects of being known as the winner of the first two primaries – even if the first was only by eight votes, it makes for a strong headline.

3. Santorum somehow finally managed to catch a big bloc of the evangelical vote, but when I compare his pros and cons with the previous four candidates who have rapidly risen and fallen thus far, I think he’s just happening to be riding his wave during a voting cycle and is destined to come back down soon. The media seems all focused on the amount of time he spent in Iowa and how he doesn’t have the time and money to compete in the upcoming states. I don’t think that matters so much (he’s going to get an influx of cash over the next few days); I just don’t think he’s got enough appeal regardless, even after he consolidates what’s left of the Perry and Bachmann factions of the evangelical vote. He’s another Huccabee with super-conservative social positions but a history of supporting big government and political maneuvering, and without even the benefit of having governed a state. I just don’t think voters will go for that. (Oops, I wasn’t supposed to make vacuous speculations… hey what do I know? Voters didn’t pick Romney last time either. This is just what I expect from my admitted biases.) The biggest wildcard, however, is what will happen to the evangelical vote if Romney shores up the nomination – is the flip-flopping Mormon distasteful enough to support a third-party “true conservative Christian” run? Or is the specter of Obama 2.0 enough to get everyone to hold their noses again? Anyone who claims to know the answer is arrogant and not familiar with real evangelical voters.

4. Look at that guy on the bottom… Buddy Roemer! I’ve heard of this guy here and there on the Internet but he’s gotten even less attention than Gary Johnson, who at least was allowed into two of the debates. He apparently ended up with 31 votes; the screen showed 46 when I went to bed last night, but maybe there was a mistake somewhere? Regarldess, his total was embarrassingly fewer than the “Other” and “No Preference” candidates, and even fewer than Cain, who dropped out weeks ago. But the man was taking it all in stride on Twitter, making humorous comments like:

I almost have enough votes in Iowa to start a bowling league. #Roementum [after about 9 votes]

I’m going to drive the Duggar bus to pick up my Iowa supporters and take them out for a PTSD round of drinks. #headdesk [after about 20 votes]

Okay. That’s it. I’m buying a sweater vest. #itworkedforsantorum

…followed by some more serious comments about not being invited to any of the debates thus far but trying to run a campaign without any corporate money and funded entirely by donations of $100 or less. Considering that Buddy Roemer has been the governor of a state (Louisiana), I think it’s shameful that he hasn’t at least gotten more attention by the media and his party (I’m going to attempt to correct his lack of attention in the blogosphere!) I haven’t dug into his positions yet, but he sounds like he might be the kind of non-dogmatic, non-establishment, small-government kind of guy I would like; I already have a dangerous penchant for being attracted to nice but under-rated underdogs. At least his name is forced to show up on the poll result tables, if not most of the news articles, so hopefully more people will look into him.

Well, that’s all I got. Now go read some intelligent commentary from vastly superior intellects who will tell you exactly what this race means!