Pre-Open Thread Iowa Final Thoughts
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- Because I need two more chances to be wrong, I will go chalk in terms of predicting the outcome. I think the concerns about Trump’s organization and the commitment of his supporters are far from trivial, but I think with Cruz trending in the wrong direction he won’t make up the gap. I won’t be shocked if Sanders pulls an upset, but the idiosyncrasies of the Iowa caucus that hurt her in 2008 work in her favor in 2016. I think she’s more likely to overperform the final polls than to underperform them.
- It should also be noted that the Iowa caucus is a really terrible and indefensible institution. As with the electoral college, I don’t think any progressive would support it if designing a way of choosing a nominee from scratch — giving outsized influence to an unrepresentative state that uses vote-suppressing procedures is just a bad idea. And it’s more common to hear defenses of the Heartland Wisdom of the Iowa caucuses than it is to see affirmative defenses of the electoral college.
- Silver’s rundown of the various scenarios is useful. Particularly since some of Cruz’s support seems to be leaking to Rubio I actually think that the best-case viable scenario for the Donald would be for Cruz to finish a close second to Trump and Rubio a very distant third. If Rubio does better than the final polls and Cruz worse, that pretty much finishes the latter and gives the former a shot if he can at least pull ahead of Jeb! and Kasich in New Hampshire and do well in South Carolina. (These are, of course, very big ifs; it’s certainly Trump’s race to lose if he wins tonight.)
- On a related note, the prediction markets now favor Trump.