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Deleted member 231381
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A few points on Iowa:
Sanders has actually been carpet-bombing TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire since the beginning of November. He's actually outspent Clinton in ads in the past month (dropping $5.5 million between November 12th and December 15th compared to Clinton's $4 million). The talk by his strategists back in early November was "watch out, this is going to make a difference!", but the polls have only showed Clinton's lead increasing since then.
I disagree re: hasn't made a difference. He's +9 by Selzer. That's a significant difference on polls from Iowa since Biden dropped out using similar methodology.
Truthfully ads aren't going to make that much of a difference at this point anyway. Sanders has only 5% less name recognition than Clinton at this point in Iowa according to Selzer, and other polls like Quinnipiac report a similar story. You can argue that Sanders is at a name recognition disadvantage nationwide that increased press and ad campaigns could overcome, but Iowans are pretty clued in.
It's not about name recognition now, it's about converting people. Hence why one of Sanders' ads is about how effective he's been, a key concern Clinton people have. Ads (obviously) aren't just about recognition, or e.g. people won't even air ads during presidentials.
Overall Clinton's only outspent Sanders by $4.3 million in ads this year. All that money she's been burning through hasn't been invested in ads but in ground game. That doesn''t show up in the polls - it didn't for Obama in 2008 - but it absolutely makes a difference on election day. Clinton's got the very best - I'd argue at least as strong as Obama's 2008 Iowa operation. And it's too late for Sanders to compete at that level. Not only does it take months to fine-tune, but he hasn't got access to the very best staff, who are overwhelmingly in Clinton's campaign, who know how to game the complex caucus rules and find every last voter. She also has the vast bulk of local party activists on her side.
Sanders focus in Iowa these past couple of weeks: Rallies as per. Clinton's focus: Precint Leadership Training. The extensive focus on field will make a difference.
Bluntly, we'll see. It's all very well and good training people, but numbers weigh out and I think Clinton will struggle to maintain those numbers. ~850,000 donators is a significant number; if you put money towards a candidate, you can be pretty sure you'll turn up.
I don't think Selzer can accurately predict the turnout expected on caucus night (unless there's a source?) but she can pick up the percentage of first time caucus goers expected. She predicted that 60% of Democratic caucus goers would be caucusing for the first time in 2008, and despite the Clinton camp and Edwards camp calling that number absurd she was proved right (the number was 57%). So far she's not picked up numbers anywhere close to that figure. If Sanders really was likely to be expecting a flood of new voters to overwhelm Clinton on caucus night Selzer would be picking it up in the voter registration lists by now.
She's actually calling roughly similar numbers - 200,000 voters to 2008's 230,000. But I'm not suggesting Selzer is wrong, I'm suggesting she's right about the state of the race as it currently stands, and that there is reason to suppose that state will change.
This isn't going to be about votes cast, it's going to be about the delegate math. Even Selzer's poll can only poll the former, which likely underestimates Clinton's lead since she'll have the advantage when it comes to the latter. Selzer's noted that Sanders support is more geographically clustered than Clinton's - most noteably in college towns and cities - which means he's going to be harder for him to pick up as many delegates statewide.
This is where the caucus date helps Clinton compared to 2008. Back then the caucuses were in January during the winter break, which meant Iowan college students were back at home all over the state. When they went to caucus the their votes were distributed fairly evenly in all 99 counties and 1682 precints, which gave Obama a big delegate advantage. This time in February they're going to be caucusing in a handful of college towns like Iowa City and Ames. And getting 10000 students to caucus for Sanders in a precinct won't get him any more delegates than 1000.
This is true, I concede. One of the many sins of DWS, alas.
One other way this isn't 2008: it's essentially a two person race and that plays to Clinton's advantage. Clinton turned out around ~70,000 caucus-goers in 2008 - more than Edwards and not far off Obama - but she got pummeled in second round voting and ended up third. When Obama/Edwards/Richardson/Biden failed to meet the 15% threshold in a precinct, very few of their second preferences then went to Clinton. She was much much more divisive in Iowa - her unfavorable ratings among Democrats in Iowa was near 25% (thanks to her Iraq War vote), it's now closer to 10%. There's not much evidence O'Malley's 4% is going to break heavily one way or other. So this year it isn't about reaching out and building alliances, it's about raw turnout, and Clinton has the edge - both demographically and organizationally.
Yes. I don't argue this is like 2008. My arguments are independent of 2008; I don't think Sanders and Obama are similar candidates and I don't think their campaigns operate particularly similarly.