'Romney surge' in Iowa and nationally appears to have been a polling glitch
Yesterday the news was full of a new poll showing Mitt Romney coming from nowhere to tie Rudy Giuliani for first place among Republicans nationally. The surprising NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted between Dec. 14 and Dec. 16, showed Romney and Giuliani with 20% each, Huckabee with 17%, and the resurgent John McCain with 14%.
Combine that with an Insider Advantage poll taken on Dec. 16 and Dec 17 showing Romney recapturing the lead in Iowa,with 28% to Huckabee's 25, and a Rasmussen Poll taken on Dec. 17, showing Huckabee's Iowa lead over Romney cut to only one per cent, and Romney's folks are fantasizing that the Huckabee "honeymoon" has worn off and that their man is rocking and rolling.
Alas, not so. Another national poll came out today-one from Fox News- showing Giuliani with 20%, Huckabee and John McCain tied for second, with 19%- and Romney back in the pack, where he's been all along, with a one-point lead over Fred Thompson for third (11% to 10%). And in Iowa, CNN has come out with a poll overlapping the Insider Advantage poll and Rasmussen polls, but taken over a longer period. It shows Huckabee with an eight point lead over Romney, 33-25, with everyone else in single digits.
Strategic Vision, polling during the same period as Insider Advantage but keeping at it one day longer, shows Huckabee leading Romney in Iowa 31% to 25%, with Thompson third at 16%. And the American Research Group, polling between Dec. 16 and Dec. 19, has Romney tumbling into third place in Iowa, with only 17% to 28% for Huckabee and 20% for John McCain!
Add to that a spate of recent polls (somehow overlooked by the Romney crowd) showing Huckabee either pulling within the margin of error or- in one aberrant case no more significant in isolation from those polls in Iowa showing a Romney renaissance- actually taking the lead in Romney's Midwestern "firewall state," Michigan, and we have a picture that is hardly as encouraging to the Romney campaign as one the supporters of the son of the late Michigan Governor George Romney might want you to think. All the more so in view of the polling trends in New Hampshire, which show a Romney victory there no more a foregone conclusion than a Huckabee victory in Iowa.
So what's going on? Well, first off, the limitations of polling itself need to be borne in mind. A poll, as someone once said, is a snapshot of a race at a particular moment. While a set of snapshots taken in rapid succession may well show a trend (and are far more reliable than one or two polls taken in isolation), all an individual poll tells us is what the state of opinion was at a given instant. Any one poll might well be an aberration- and when it gives a dramatically different result than a large number of polls taken both before and after it (as is the case with the polls showing Romney recapturing the lead in Iowa and tying Giuliani nationally), it almost certainly is.
Secondly, the situations both in Iowa and nationally are extremely fluid. Though reports of the death of the "Huckaboom" are greatly exaggerated, he has clearly not yet emerged as the consensus front runner. Giuliani, Romney, and even Thompson and McCain are still very much in the mix. That means that at any given moment temporary glitches in the polls can be expected; only when a pattern emerges do they become significant. One thing we do know is that Huckabee has not yet "closed the deal" here in Iowa, much less nationally- and that it's a mistake to confuse even a series of snapshots for a trend so definitive that it can't be reversed.
Thirdly, the trend- at least thus far- hasn't been reversed. Huckabee clings to a solid lead here in Iowa, but especially in view of the strength of Romney's organization, that lead doesn't necessarily translate into victory on Caucus Night. And Iowans are notorious for pulling surprises; polls have not historically been terribly reliable predictors of what Iowans will do when they finally gather and make their choices. The "ground game-" the respective abilities of the campaigns to get their voters to the caucuses- is all-important in Iowa, and so is that streak of native perversity Meredith Wilson immortalized in the song "Iowa Stubborn," from The Music Man (a trait, btw, which people from Iowa and New Hampshire tend to share!).
Finally, the national race is very much up for grabs. A number of models have been proposed, from the (now, I think, obsolete) concept of an inevitable showdown between Romney and Giuliani to what is historically the most usual pattern: a sudden breakthrough by an unexpected candidate (Thompson seemed most likely to fill the bill for a while; more likely, at this point, would be Huckabee) who would suddenly galvanize the Party nationally and sweep all before him. Especially given Giuliani's ultimate unacceptability to the majority of Republicans (remembering the difference between a plurality and a majority), the second model still seems the most likely. Whether Huckabee is the man around whom such a consensus can develop, given what is mistakenly seen as his "liberal" record as the governor of a poor state whose collapsing infrastructure had to be rescued even at the cost of tax increases, remains to be seen.
But especially with the caucuses and the primaries all pushed so closely together, another possibility looms. A possible regional fragmentation, with Huckabee dominating the South, Giuliani the East and West Coasts and the industrial parts of the Midwest, and Romney taking the West, cannot be discounted. We may see next summer the first brokered convention the Republican Party has seen since 1952, when Dwight D. Eisenhower (barely- though that fact has long since been forgotten) turned back a strong challenge from Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio).
That's why who turns out to be everybody's second choice is almost important at this point as who turns out to be their first. And that's why going negative on a fellow Republican- as Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson have done here in Iowa on Mike Huckabee- is probably not a real good idea for anybody with ambitions to come out of a brokered convention as a consensus compromise nominee.
As of now, the picture seems to be one in which reports of Mike Huckabee's "boom" to an end are very much exaggerated- and in which Mitt Romney is fighting for his campaign's life in both Iowa and New Hampshire, with the trends in both places against him. And Huckabee's chance of emerging as the eventual nominee would seem to rest upon his ability to make Republicans nationally see that what he did in the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock isn't necessarily a reliable guide to what he would do under very different circumstances in the White House
Combine that with an Insider Advantage poll taken on Dec. 16 and Dec 17 showing Romney recapturing the lead in Iowa,with 28% to Huckabee's 25, and a Rasmussen Poll taken on Dec. 17, showing Huckabee's Iowa lead over Romney cut to only one per cent, and Romney's folks are fantasizing that the Huckabee "honeymoon" has worn off and that their man is rocking and rolling.
Alas, not so. Another national poll came out today-one from Fox News- showing Giuliani with 20%, Huckabee and John McCain tied for second, with 19%- and Romney back in the pack, where he's been all along, with a one-point lead over Fred Thompson for third (11% to 10%). And in Iowa, CNN has come out with a poll overlapping the Insider Advantage poll and Rasmussen polls, but taken over a longer period. It shows Huckabee with an eight point lead over Romney, 33-25, with everyone else in single digits.
Strategic Vision, polling during the same period as Insider Advantage but keeping at it one day longer, shows Huckabee leading Romney in Iowa 31% to 25%, with Thompson third at 16%. And the American Research Group, polling between Dec. 16 and Dec. 19, has Romney tumbling into third place in Iowa, with only 17% to 28% for Huckabee and 20% for John McCain!
Add to that a spate of recent polls (somehow overlooked by the Romney crowd) showing Huckabee either pulling within the margin of error or- in one aberrant case no more significant in isolation from those polls in Iowa showing a Romney renaissance- actually taking the lead in Romney's Midwestern "firewall state," Michigan, and we have a picture that is hardly as encouraging to the Romney campaign as one the supporters of the son of the late Michigan Governor George Romney might want you to think. All the more so in view of the polling trends in New Hampshire, which show a Romney victory there no more a foregone conclusion than a Huckabee victory in Iowa.
So what's going on? Well, first off, the limitations of polling itself need to be borne in mind. A poll, as someone once said, is a snapshot of a race at a particular moment. While a set of snapshots taken in rapid succession may well show a trend (and are far more reliable than one or two polls taken in isolation), all an individual poll tells us is what the state of opinion was at a given instant. Any one poll might well be an aberration- and when it gives a dramatically different result than a large number of polls taken both before and after it (as is the case with the polls showing Romney recapturing the lead in Iowa and tying Giuliani nationally), it almost certainly is.
Secondly, the situations both in Iowa and nationally are extremely fluid. Though reports of the death of the "Huckaboom" are greatly exaggerated, he has clearly not yet emerged as the consensus front runner. Giuliani, Romney, and even Thompson and McCain are still very much in the mix. That means that at any given moment temporary glitches in the polls can be expected; only when a pattern emerges do they become significant. One thing we do know is that Huckabee has not yet "closed the deal" here in Iowa, much less nationally- and that it's a mistake to confuse even a series of snapshots for a trend so definitive that it can't be reversed.
Thirdly, the trend- at least thus far- hasn't been reversed. Huckabee clings to a solid lead here in Iowa, but especially in view of the strength of Romney's organization, that lead doesn't necessarily translate into victory on Caucus Night. And Iowans are notorious for pulling surprises; polls have not historically been terribly reliable predictors of what Iowans will do when they finally gather and make their choices. The "ground game-" the respective abilities of the campaigns to get their voters to the caucuses- is all-important in Iowa, and so is that streak of native perversity Meredith Wilson immortalized in the song "Iowa Stubborn," from The Music Man (a trait, btw, which people from Iowa and New Hampshire tend to share!).
Finally, the national race is very much up for grabs. A number of models have been proposed, from the (now, I think, obsolete) concept of an inevitable showdown between Romney and Giuliani to what is historically the most usual pattern: a sudden breakthrough by an unexpected candidate (Thompson seemed most likely to fill the bill for a while; more likely, at this point, would be Huckabee) who would suddenly galvanize the Party nationally and sweep all before him. Especially given Giuliani's ultimate unacceptability to the majority of Republicans (remembering the difference between a plurality and a majority), the second model still seems the most likely. Whether Huckabee is the man around whom such a consensus can develop, given what is mistakenly seen as his "liberal" record as the governor of a poor state whose collapsing infrastructure had to be rescued even at the cost of tax increases, remains to be seen.
But especially with the caucuses and the primaries all pushed so closely together, another possibility looms. A possible regional fragmentation, with Huckabee dominating the South, Giuliani the East and West Coasts and the industrial parts of the Midwest, and Romney taking the West, cannot be discounted. We may see next summer the first brokered convention the Republican Party has seen since 1952, when Dwight D. Eisenhower (barely- though that fact has long since been forgotten) turned back a strong challenge from Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio).
That's why who turns out to be everybody's second choice is almost important at this point as who turns out to be their first. And that's why going negative on a fellow Republican- as Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson have done here in Iowa on Mike Huckabee- is probably not a real good idea for anybody with ambitions to come out of a brokered convention as a consensus compromise nominee.
As of now, the picture seems to be one in which reports of Mike Huckabee's "boom" to an end are very much exaggerated- and in which Mitt Romney is fighting for his campaign's life in both Iowa and New Hampshire, with the trends in both places against him. And Huckabee's chance of emerging as the eventual nominee would seem to rest upon his ability to make Republicans nationally see that what he did in the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock isn't necessarily a reliable guide to what he would do under very different circumstances in the White House
Comments