About bgunn

bgunn

Location:

Not specified

Joined on:

01/05/08

• not yet rated

  Politics

  response to  Morgan Clendaniel's post Interpreting Iowa

  fuzzy math

  Morgan, you wrote:

  "Since 1972, there have been seven Democratic Iowa caucuses (cauci?) in which a sitting president or vice president wasn't running. Of those seven, the winner has gone on to become the nominee twice."

  Not quite. There have actually been 6 caucuses (that's the plural, btw) since 1972 (unless you include 2008, which makes no sense).

  And since then there have been 3 times that a non-incumbent won the nom, not 2: Carter in '76; Mondale in '84; and Kerry in '04 (well, technically Carter lost to "uncommitted", but he beat all the other candidates). Perhaps you were thinking that Mondale was the sitting VP back in '84.
  The other three:
  Muskie in '72
  Gephardt in '88 (Dukakis finished 3rd)
  Harkin in '92
  Harkin, of course, is from Iowa, so no one even bothered to run against him in '92 (which also invalidates your point about Clinton winning 3% of the vote).
  So that means in 5 meaningful caucuses, three times the winner became the nominee, twice he didn't. In other words, your point about Iowa being a pretty weak indicator of future success is itself pretty weak.

  Comments (0)

  Commented on January 5, 2008 by - bgunn