THE NOTE: NEWS SUMMARY
The caucuses begin at 7:30 pm ET this evening.
The AP's Everyman Ron Fournier calls the race "impossible to predict," and we agree.
But the political universe is of two minds, simultaneously chewing on two (or more) different outcomes and their implications, each coming complete with their own sets of evidence.
The Momentum-ers versus the Organizationers. The Mos versus the Orgs.
The dynamic M's contend that the Des Moines Register poll shows a distinct and hard trend among undecided voters in the direction of Kerry and Edwards; they contend that the political press has overstated the advantages of unions and hackeysack champions to turn out voters; they believe that the Dean hard count, in particular, has been oversold and many Dean voters are turning to their number two choices. Bigger turnouts benefit the M's.
They predict a Kerry-Edwards or Edwards-Kerry top-two finish, followed by Dean and Gephardt — or even Gephardt and Dean. They're the ones who point out that nearly half of voters polled in the Register survey say they're undecided — and more likely than not to end up with the surgers.
The static O's believe that the momentum thing is overrated; that the caucuses are too complex for individual voters without an organization to corral them; that Dean and Gephardt's hard counts are solid and firm; that the legion of Dean and Gephardt volunteers spread throughout the state will prove dispositive; that the polls don't account for newly registered voters; that the Alliance for Economic Justice machine that's coordinating union organizers for Gephardt are tough and determined.
They're the ones who state, over and over again, "whoever gets those 35,000 people to vote … will win."
Will the O's or the M's prevail? It depends on the answers to these questions about tonight's caucuses and caucusgoers:
(a) Will these folks be the universe of usual suspects? How many of them will be people who have never voted in a caucus before?
(b) Will they be new Gen-x'ers?
(c) Is anecdotal evidence about new voter registration in middle-to-upper class college towns evidence of a hidden Dean surge?
(d) What will the Kucinich voters do if they encounter threshold problems?
(e) What will union turnout be like? Will Gephardt have the advantage here because his unions are more experienced — or will Dean, because his unions are more evenly distributed across the state?
(f) Has everyone overstated the ability of unions to turn out voters on behalf of their chosen candidates? And understated the ability of average Iowans to know how to caucus without instructions and social cues? If Iowans know how to get the caucus sites themselves, and if they know the rules, maybe the all-powerful factor of union organizing will matter less than people think.
(g) How will the networks, the AP, and the papers cover the entrance poll results versus the actual results?
And don't get us started (just yet) on what the 19 Reporters Who Decide What It All Means will say about whichever of these various scenarios comes true tonight.
Incidentally, the state's Democrat-in-chief, Gov. Tom Vilsack predicts a turnout of about 120,000. Secretary of State Chet Culver thinks it may go as high as 125,000.
The candidates made lots of morning appearances, but we heard no news made.
All of this has taken its toll on the candidates.
ABC News campaign reporter Ed O'Keefe reports that Senator John Kerry has completely lost his voice.
He will skip his first three events, but a surrogate speaker might fill in.
We know a good lot of you wonder how much money the candidates have spent in Iowa. As you know, The campaigns are tight-lipped about spending figures, and even rival campaigns have a hard time making reliable estimates. Every active presidential campaign has until Jan. 31 to disclose its spending through the 4th quarter of 2003, and we won't know until mid-February how much was spent in January.
Here's what we can say: The Dean campaign has spent well in excess of $22 million nationally, including at least $3 million on television advertisements in Iowa alone. Several people familiar with the situation in Iowa, including David Redlawsk, a politically connected Democratic political scientist who tracks the issue, estimate that Dean has also spent more (probably much more than) $3 million — in staff, field operations and direct mail.
Based on other sourcing, we can say that Dean has spent more than $7 million on Iowa. The actual total, if it's ever known, will probably be a lot higher.
Our guestimates for other candidates: Kerry: more than $4.4 million … Edwards and Gephardt, more than $ 3 million. (Yes, yes, we're aware of the caps … and the exemptions … and the allocation formulas.) |
