The wheels came off Rudi Giuliani’s waggon while he was still gathering speed, but I think there is a distinct possibility that his analysis of the election, if not his tactics, was correct.

The early primaries (by which I mean those states whose primaries or caucuses come before Super Tuesday) have had three roles. Firstly, give candidates who have been less successful in attracting funding a chance to cause upsets by doing well in (say) Iowa by showing some folksy charm. Secondly, as more early primaries take place, they strip out the candidates who aren’t going to make the grade. Thirdly, they give a leading candidate (or conceivably, couple of candidates) a real edge by building up a clutch of delegate votes before Super Tuesday. The first two processes act, effectively, as a shortlisting process before the ‘main’ nomination of Super Tuesday, but with an ‘executive committee’ of sorts being able to prefer a candidate.¹

Now, the weaker candidates, including Edwards and apparently Giuliani, have been or are being winnowed out and we are left with Clinton and Obama for the Democrats and Huckabee, McCain, Romney and Paul for the Grand Old Party. In the past, one might have expected (say) Clinton to have built up a few states before Super Tuesday, giving her a commanding lead, or for McCain (for the sake of argument) to be unassailable. In fact, Senator Clinton leads Senator Obama by the comparatively small margin of 235 to 156 pledged delegates, while the delegates for McCain and Romney are 97 and 74 respectively. California alone has 370 Democratic delegates and 173 Republican delegates; the total up for grabs on Super Duper Tuesday is many times that. Wikipedia has the figures.

It would seem that Rudi Giuliani’s strategy was to ignore the small states that happened to vote first because so much would happen on Super Duper Tuesday; he didn’t account for the ability of the press to decide that a campaign didn’t have enough momentum. However, a decent showing on Super Duper Tuesday followed by a good campaign in the neglected, post-SDT states could have seen him through to the Republican nomination.

It is entirely possible that, at the end of Super Duper Tuesday, one or both parties will not have a candidate with a clear majority; bunching lots of states together makes it more likely. It is possible - just possible - that the small, forgotten states could become really rather important.

One final note. It would not surprise me if Florida goes Republican. The primary there was meaningless as it was before the cut-off set by the DNC; the GOP primary counted for half its usual tally. Increased interest, activity and coverage around the GOP may just raise them enough in the electorate’s mind.

xD.

1 - yes, the primary system really needs reform

Posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Categories: Americana, Politics.
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