Dec.05

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Five Times Primaries Were Surprising

The Republican primary race has been static for some time now. Yes, candidates have been dropping like flies and there will be a debate for second place tomorrow, but it seems the fundamentals are frozen in place now. However, surprises can happen and have happened in the past, even in the final stretches or after one or two nominating contests. Here are five examples from the last 20 years where expectations were upended, even in the final stretches or after a few voters got to chime in.

• Democrats in 2004: After many Democratic members of Congress voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, plenty of Democrats who opposed the war there were very angry. One of them was Howard Dean, a former low-profile governor of Vermont. He decided the anti-war Democrats needed a voice, so he announced that he was running for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. There was instantly a surge of support for him. However, not everyone was anti-war. Former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, for one, was pro-war, and he also jumped in. For months, the main battle seemed to be Dean vs. Gephardt. This went on until shortly before the Iowa caucuses. The attacks each one hurled at the other one turned off Iowans, allowing John Kerry to win in Iowa. Dean tried to buck up his supporters, but a defective sound system turned his remarks into the "scream heard round the world" and finished off Dean. Kerry went on to win the nomination—and lose the election.
  
  
• Republicans in 2008: At this point in the 2008 cycle, one poll released by The Washington Post/ABC News put Rudy Giuliani on top by 6 points, outside the margin of error. Second was Mike Huckabee. Third was Mitt Romney. They were trailed by actor Fred Thompson and John McCain—in fifth place. Although Giuliani, a Catholic, was way ahead nationally, he didn't campaign much in Iowa because he knew that he wouldn't be a big hit with all the evangelical Protestants there. Romney, a lifelong member of the LDS Church, wasn't afraid of that and campaigned heavily in Iowa. In one poll taken in Oct. 2007, he led in the Hawkeye State by 23 points, roughly Donald Trump's lead there now. Another guy who campaigned in Iowa was a neighbor, Mike Huckabee, whose persona was that of an avuncular southern preacher. He said he was a conservative, but not mad at anyone. To everyone's surprise, Huckabee crushed Romney by 10 points and finished him off. But Huckabee was a terrible fit for New Hampshire and Romney was badly damaged by his loss in Iowa, so John McCain came back from the dead and won New Hampshire. From then on, there was no stopping him.
  
  
• Democrats in 2008: All through 2007, everyone "knew" that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in to win all the primaries and cruise to the nomination and victory easily. They especially knew that while Iowa had never voted for a woman, the overwhelmingly white state was certainly not going to vote for a Black candidate, especially not a "skinny kid with a funny name," as Barack Obama described himself. Surprise, surprise. Shoo-in Clinton came in third, after Obama, who won by 8 points, and John Edwards. Edwards dropped out later and Obama and Clinton duked it out. No one saw that coming. And virtually no serious observer of politics expected Obama to get the nomination and win the presidency. It came completely out of the blue.
  
  
• Republicans in 2012: In Dec. 2011, the person leading in the polls of the Republican primary was former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Remember him? He was leading nationally by double digits. He was the Trump of his day, supported by the grass roots and hated by the establishment. Also running was Rick Santorum. He was fundamentally a more ascetic version of Huckabee. He had won two Senate terms in Pennsylvania, but was crushed trying for the third one. Nevertheless, his open and very visible religiosity propelled him to a narrow victory in Iowa. Gingrich was shocked and knocked off his pedestal. He was also a poor fit for New Hampshire, which was won by the former governor of an adjacent state, Mitt Romney. Gingrich managed to win South Carolina and eventually his own state of Georgia, but those were his only wins. Santorum used Iowa as a springboard to win 11 states in the Midwest and South, but in the end Romney, not Gingrich, got the nomination, and Gingrich fizzled out despite a massive lead in December, just before Iowa.
  
  
• Democrats in 2020: Joe Biden was well known in the fall of 2019, but he wasn't the hot new kid like Pete Buttigieg or a progressive favorite like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Biden was a tired old retread that nobody really wanted. He certainly wasn't leading in any polls. He was crushed in Iowa, coming in fourth after Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren. In New Hampshire it got only worse. Not only was he behind those three, but also behind Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN). He was then crushed by Sanders in Nevada. Everyone wrote Biden off as roadkill. Then he won South Carolina by 30 points and many other candidates dropped out, making it easier for Biden to consolidate the not-Bernie vote. A week after Super Tuesday, Biden was the presumptive nominee.
  

So the early leader(s) often didn't do so well, even when they had big leads in December before election year. Of course, the only person in recent times with a hold on his supporters as tight as Donald Trump has is Bernie Sanders. But Sanders' base is much smaller than Trump's, so Sanders' grip on them wasn't enough (because their numbers are too small). Nevertheless, there have been quite a few surprises in the past 20 years so a surprise in 2024, while unlikely, wouldn't be unprecedented. (V)