The Imperfect Primary

Barbara Norrander, my office mate at San Jose State, recently published a book on the way we nominate presidential candidates.  The book, entitled The Imperfect Primary. (N.Y.:  Routledge, 2015), details the strange way we pick our presidential candidates.

One of the amazing aspects that Norrander points out is the low level of participation in caucus states.  Even in Iowa, which is the ground zero of presidential nominating politics, less than 5% of the eligible voters turn out for the caucuses.  In Maine in 2008, in the hot race between Obama and Clinton who were clawing for every single delegate, about 1% of the eligible voters turned out.  

Norrander also emphasizes the jury-rigged system of delegate selection.  States are pretty much free to set their own rules, resulting in all sorts of delegate selection processes.  

Here’s another interesting item from the very first page.  Candidates go through a process called “discovery, scrutiny, and decline.”  When the candidates first come on the scene, there’s a spate of favorable publicity.  Then, after the candidate is in the limelight, the media begins to investigate.  Finally, after the negative aspects of the candidate emerge, the candidate sinks.  In the current cycle, we can see this most clearly in the Ben Carson trajectory, although I believe with Trump we are now in the scrutiny phase, and I predict a rather swift decline, especially after he blows it in Iowa.