Cross-posted at The Field (also with GOP caucus predictions).
Fine Print: Predictions are not endorsements. They are opinions about what will occur at some point in the future, in this case tomorrow night. The following predictions are strictly my own and don’t represent the opinions of RuralVotes or anybody else.
It’s not the polls that tell us who will win tomorrow, but other factors: field organization (it really does matter), message, resources and how they’ve been deployed. All of them point to an Obama victory in Iowa tomorrow.
Just a few days ago when all holiday season polls were showing Clinton or Edwards ahead or surging in Iowa, I tried to gently suggest, in a number of ways, why Obama is, polls be damned, likely to win college educated women away from Clinton and hold onto college educated men against a late surge from Edwards. And I also opined that while everyone talks about his younger voter support, that Obama’s “nuclear weapon” would be Independent voters flooding the Democratic caucuses in record numbers...
That Des Moines Register pollster J. Anne Selzer found that weapon on her radar screen will, if it comes true, increase the deserved mystique and credibility that surrounds her ability to figure out who will turn out to vote before the balloting starts. Even if she’s off by nine points on her projection that 40 percent of Democratic caucus-goers will be Independent voters, she’ll still have been closer to the real number than any other pollster, and will have told, in advance, the story of tomorrow night. (The DMR tonight offers more detail on the Independent tsunami that it reports is headed the Democrats’ way.) But even if her poll had shown opposite results, I’d still be predicting an Obama win for tomorrow.
Obama is likely to win because he staffed the largest field organization and he did so early: more field offices and - prior to a wave of late arrivals over the past month for Clinton - he had more staff on Iowan ground than any other candidate. Through the Camp Obama training programs all summer long, the Obama campaign prepared its troops well through a program developed by, among others, veteran community organizer Marshall Ganz and rising field superstar Temo Figueroa.
Clinton’s Iowa field marshal Theresa Vilmain as much as admitted to reporters that Clinton got a late start in Iowa. Meanwhile, Obama targeted young people (the others ignored them or scorned them as non-voting miscreants) including Independents, and defended them when DMR political reporter David Yepsen crusaded briefly against non-native students at Iowa universities participating. While Clinton, Dodd and Biden pandered to Yepsen, Obama dug in – at some risk, given Yepsen’s long arm over the process - and showed mettle that should reap dividends tomorrow night.
During the many debates, while pundits opined that Obama had lackluster performances, something else was going on at ground level: TV news focus groups of Iowa voters showed Obama usually convincing more Hawkeye state voters that watched them than the other candidates. Obama has consistently drawn the largest crowds throughout Iowa all year long and over the past week, and in hyper-active effort to avoid the errors of Howard Dean four years ago, his campaign prioritized enlisting those that came to fill out pledge cards to caucus and be incorporated into the campaign organization.
The proximity of Obama’s state of Illinois to Iowa will also play a role in this victory: he’s likely to build up margins of victory in Eastern Iowa border counties, some quite populous. (For those that think that the late US Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois failed to do that in 1988, take a trip in the Wayback Machine to William Saletan’s finding that year that Simon may have actually won the '88 Iowa caucuses.)
Money has also played a role, as it always does in politics. This year, the turnout of first-time caucus-goers, including Independent voters, will also be fueled by simple math. Halperin quotes CBS News’ Campaign Notebook tonight: “Candidates spent $65 million in Iowa this year, three times 2004’s total.” Well, you often get back what you pay out, and Obama’s success fundraising with (what is now approaching) 500,000 donors, most of them small, gave him the resources to go dollar for dollar with the once inevitable Clinton machine, even if we include in the totals the $2.5 million in independent expenditures made on her behalf.
Yes, money can’t buy you love, so in the end it comes down to Obama’s buzzword of “change,” now recited by all candidates. (When, as today, Clinton say she is “fired up and ready to go,” Iowans understand the “me-too” nature of such proclamations. The writing is on the wall.)
For all these reasons and more, that’s why I call tomorrow’s Iowa caucus for Obama.
But since everyone else believes it will be close, I must ask, in a moment of self-doubt: what if he doesn’t come in first? If he’s close – and nobody doubts he’ll be in the top tier of candidates – Obama still “wins” the expectations game as much as any one or two that might edge him out. Because few expected, months ago, that an African-American could ever even come close to winning in a 97-percent white state like Iowa. Win, place or show, his strong support tomorrow will be explosive news all over the world, because before large numbers of black voters had the chance, a significant number of white ones showed their willingness to cross that line. That said, although Obama can still “win” by coming in a close second or even third, my money is on this horse to win outright.
As for second place, this is much harder to call. The polls and money-spent point to Clinton while the momentum and time-spent in Iowa, including the experience of four years ago, point to Edwards. I’ve gone back and forth on this question myself a number of times, but I’m going to give a slight edge to Edwards, mainly because the caucus remains a referendum on Clinton - the symbolic incumbent in the first year since 1928 when neither a sitting president or vice president sought the presidency - and those are terms very harmful to her endgame tomorrow night in a "change" election year.
And if Clinton really tanks from front-runner to third place, if the air starts audibly hissing out of the tires, then fourth place becomes important, too. Despite the fact that he’s trailed Bill Richardson in most polls, Joe Biden spent more time in Iowa, and built up more relationships with real Democratic power brokers. His resume wins the “experience” argument over those of both Clinton and Richardson. Biden was a popular and likeable voice during the debates, and even if the entrance poll tomorrow night shows him behind Richardson, by the end of the night I predict he will win more delegates than him. Much of this race has been about who will emerge as the anti-Clinton. If Obama blows the two other top-tier candidates out of the water tomorrow night, somebody then has to emerge as the anti-Obama. In a Clinton collapse, that most likely will be Edwards. But Biden, if he can ace fourth place in Iowa, could emerge next in New Hampshire as the authentic “experience” candidate to offer rivalry to the young bull.
Here's my call:
1. Obama
- Edwards
- Clinton
- Biden
Of course, I could be totally wrong about all of this: Odds are 2-1 against me on each of these calls. The safe pick would be not to call it. But life is not about avoiding risks. It’s about taking the right ones.
We’ll continue blogging here at The Field through and beyond tomorrow's caucuses, but Iowa voters have got the big blog in their hands now.