Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
As you can tell I am not a Politition	jerogers	01/09/04
I am not a good politition yet I guess, will someone please tell me why Iowa and New Hampshire are so important? Why not California and Texas maybe? They say only 63,000 of million's are the only ones that vote in Iowa anyhow. There has got to be something I dont know about. THANK YOU Jackie
Answered By		Answered On
voiceguy2000		01/09/04
You might find this article by Mark Shields on the subject of primary "front-loading" to be very interesting. It is all the more interesting given that it was written in January of 2002 -- almost 2 years ago -- yet seems to be right on the money with its predictions. Here is a more recent article published by PBS that gives a broader view of the primary process. The general consensus, as far as I can tell, is that the significance of Iowa and New Hampshire showings has dropped because of front-loading, which so shortens the primary season that there is no time for a less-favored candidate who does especially well in Iowa or New Hampshire to catch up before the "Super Tuesday" primaries that come along so soon. As journalism professor (and ex-journalist) Christopher Hanson wrote last year in the Columbia Journalism Review, There was a time when a grass-roots candidate had a shot at raising sufficient cash after a strong showing in Iowa or New Hampshire to build significant momentum (George McGovern in 1972, Gary Hart in 1984). This was possible because the primary season was once three months long, stretching from March to June. That gave an underdog time to make the most of his victories, drawing press coverage, supporters, organizers, and donors between one election and the next. But since front loading took hold, there has not been enough time for an outsider to capitalize on an early win. The primaries are packed too tightly together for a poorly funded candidate to build real momentum. Thus in 1992, cash-strapped Democrat Paul Tsongas beat Bill Clinton in New Hampshire, only to be buried by Clinton money in the primary-crowded weeks that followed. In 1996 and 2000 the New Hampshire victors, Pat Buchanan and John McCain, met the same fate at the hands of the financial frontrunners, Bob Dole and George W. Bush. (Full article here.) A similar theme is sounded by Christine Barbour and Gerald Wright of Indiana University in their book, Keeping the Republic: With most of the states holding primaries in March, the nominations could be essentially sewn up by April, giving most Americans very little time to figure out who stands for what, and thereby increasing the power of the already disproportionately powerful party activists who are always interested and informed. In addition, a nomination decision by the end of March would leave three months until the usual end of the primary season, and four or five until the nominations are made official at the parties' national conventions in the summer. With the national election campaign officially underway on Labor Day nearly six months could elapse between the ending of suspense over the nomination and the campaign itself. The American public, already tired of an election season that lasts much longer than those in most other democracies, will have a very hard time sustaining interest through the politically fallow months of spring and summer, especially if they never had time to get truly engaged in the first place. Conversely, the regionally and geographically clustered primaries may succeed in splitting the votes for the competing candidates, so that no clear winner emerges from the primary process. Then the nomination will have to be made in the national convention, returning power to that gathering that the primaries were meant to dilute and dragging the public through a protracted and expensive campaign period during which all or most candidates remain viable until the end. In either scenario, the losers are the American voters, whose busy lives do not give them time to gear up for a two-step election process, one in March and one the following fall, and who are likely to ignore politics even more than they do now, or to simply abdicate the nomination power to the more enthusiastic and interested political activists. The American voters are not the only ones with something at stake in the front-loading process, however. The candidates themselves stand to be seriously affected by a process that requires them to have raised considerable funds early in the election year, before many of them are even familiar to average voters. The front-loaded system gives the advantage to candidates who started fundraising early or who are independently wealthy, whose names are well-recognized, and who are well organized early on. Dark horses, who come from behind to win, like Jimmy Carter did in 1976, will have far less chance to introduce themselves to voters before the nomination choice is made. Candidates like George W. Bush, Elizabeth Dole, and Albert Gore, whose names are familiar to voters because of their relatives or other prominent jobs they have held, will have an advantage not necessarily tied to their ability to hold office. See a more extensive extract from this book. What all of this suggests is that the significance of Iowa and New Hampshire has been greatly reduced by the timing of the next round of state primaries. At best, I would say, these contests might have some predictive value, but not much actual influence.

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