When you get exasperated at FOX/MSNBC/CNN analyzing the results with holograms and muti-touch gestures, CSPAN has traditionally been live at several caucuses. You should definitely check out what they actually look like.
In the past, I have posted live comments while following the action here, but I will be in the home of Mickey Mouse (insert your own political joke here), but I will be checking out the blog from my smart phone. Post your comments here.
Let's see who gets the "Big Mo'." To break down the polls, Nate Silver on fivethirtyeight.com has Ron Paul still looking good. His read gives you good insight in predicting election outcomes:
I’m not always a big fan of dissecting individual polls — mostly because there are liable to be a plethora of them in Iowa and New Hampshire over the next several days and their errors will tend to be mitigated as more are added to the average.
"Nevertheless, the new CNN poll of Iowa contains a methodological quirk that is worth bringing to your attention and which will probably result in the survey underestimating the support for Ron Paul.
The issue is that CNN’s Iowa poll was conducted by using a list of registered Republican voters and registered Republicans only:
Sample was drawn from the complete list of registered Republican voters provided by the Iowa Secretary of State.
What’s wrong with using a list of Republican voters for a Republican caucus poll? The answer is that it’s extremely easy for independent and Democratic voters to register or re-register as Republicans at the caucus site. Historically, a fair number of independent voters do this.
According to entrance polls in Iowa in 2008, for instance, about 15 percent of participants in the Republican caucus identified themselves as independents or Democrats on the way into the caucus site. Although the way that voters self-identify is not technically the same thing as which party they are officially registered with, this is probably a good proxy for what percentage of voters changed their registration to Republican when they signed in at the caucus location.
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Also, CNN has an interesting take on has the negativity of the 2012 campaign maybe leading to the downfall of the Iowa Caucus and its need for "retail politics" The author fears there migh t be bad moments when citizens come out to publicly voice their support and vote for their candidate Tuesday night.
Could negativity kill the Iowa caucuses?
Political TV pundits have said that this could be shaping up as the most negative campaign in US History. Really? Not quite, check out this video that puts the words of Jefferson and Adams into today's media. The election of 1800, with quotes taken out of context from the NY Times, makes the tiff between Gingrich and Romney over the Lucy Chocolate Factory comment look "sweet."
11 comments:
I get the feeling that at this point in the race it's only a matter of time before Ron Paul or Mitt Romney makes a fatal slip up in their campaign. Perhaps the Iowa caucus is where it could happen? With the negativity in this race it's almost guaranteed that a candidate will jump on an opponent's mistakes and attack them.
As I watched CNN for a majority of Tuesday, I was actually quite entertained by their "special" effects and their computerized version of Anderson Cooper. But in all honesty, I question whether Santorum's success was attributed to his countless hours spent in Iowa or whether the conservative wing of the Republican Party simply ran out of candidates. With the rise and fall of Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich, in my opinion it seems as a conservative candidate rises and then falls. I think that Santorum will follow a similar cycle and no conservative candidate has the staying power to threaten Romney in the long run.
I was surprised Rick Santorum was able to make a late minute and lose to Romney by only 8 votes. I feel the strong christian conservative population in Iowa boasted Santorum in the polls. I feel the New Hampshire primary would provide a new twist to the race as the candidate selection gets narrower and political attack ads are in full swing
In my opinion, the whole concept of introducing negativity into presidential campaigns in inane. Negative campaign initiatives simply promote the message that candidate x is "less bad" than candidate y. When the campaign emphasis leaves a candidate's qualifications and relocates to his competitors' pitfalls, the ramifications are two-fold: for one, the candidate simply makes himself appear petulant and unrefined and secondly, the candidate impedes the voting populous from choosing the most qualified candidate by redirecting the voters' attentions to fairly unimportant and irrelevant minutiae.
I feel that this negativity could end up hurting Romney in the end as he is making enemies within his own party. Gingrich even referenced Romney's negativity and attacked him in his speech at the Iowa Caucus. If the primaries turn out to be close between Romney and another candidate whether it's Santorum, Paul, or Gingrich I fear that the candidates who drop out of the race will throw their support to the person opposing Romney and that he could lose some of his popularity if he continues his overt negativity. I know that Gingrich's speech at least turned me off of Romney and it might lead to his downfall.
I think although Santorum's second place finish was very impressive for his campaign it won't really give him much momentum in New Hampshire. His surge seems in large part due to support from different Evangelical and born-again Christian groups which don't have quite the same impact outside of Iowa. The same thing happened with Huckabee in 2008 and that didn't secure the nomination for him.
I still don't understand why people and the media put so much importance on the caucuses. It just seems that people become lemmings if they register or re-register as a different party simply because other people voted one way (which might be the point). If someone truly believes in what a candidate is saying and promoting, they shouldn't so easily change their opinion of them. I suppose if people see that someone is losing, they might feel that he or she is a lost cause and they should vote for the second-best thing, but that really impedes change if everyone does that. Caucuses seem a bit like an easy way for the people to be manipulated into voting one way or another.
And I think elections would be much more interesting if the things said in the 1800s were thrown around now. In a way they seem more honest because the candidates didn't hold back; it didn't seem like they were doing it just to get voters, but that they were speaking their minds.
While I agree with Shilpa that mudslinging is a problem in campaigning, when done right, negative campaigning can be useful. In the video, the Founding Fathers' criticism was often personal, which is unprofessional and distracting, because I think a candidate's character isn't as important as their policy. However, they occasionally did attack their opponents' political leanings, which I think is the right way for a candidate to distinguish himself: not by insulting their competition, but by pointing out what's wrong with another candidate's platform, in order to prove that they would lead the country better.
Finally! I know I am a little late, but I hate attack ads! So much so, I wrote an essay about it last year. It was a pretty bad essay, but still.
These ads are, in my opinion, completely useless. Candidates try to dig up the worst pieces of information that they can find on all the other candidates and just shove it down American citizens throats! Most of the time, the "facts" they present are so misconstrued and misinterpreted that they are not even true anymore. It just makes me think about the debate today, one side said 75% of sex offenders will repeat their offense, while the other said 75% will not. Who can we believe?
The best thing to do is watch them debate, and truly hear what they have to say.
Even though attack ads are just a below the belt hitm, it really can show a different side of a candidate. Many people may not like them, but it is a vital part of the campaigning process.
In terms of speaking of negativity, I think the reason Santorum ended up doing so well in Iowa, or at least one of the prevailing reasons, is that no one has really bothered to go after him. Perry's campaign has targeted most of the major contenders, but since Santorum hasn't really been vetted in this process, nobody has had reason to go after him.What's crazy to me is that, for being a purported front-runner this entire freaking time, Mitt Romney has avoided the searing spotlite of front-runner status. Everybody else who has challenged him has instead drawn ALL the negative intention. Maybe it's just assumed that the bad things about Romney and his record are already known?
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