It's still too early to predict any specific details of the Iowa caucus, but now that there are 12 active candidates it's time to compare the situation with the 2016 GOP caucus. It also had 12 active candidates. Cruz finished first with 27%. At the moment it looks like no Democrat will approach that percentage, so if anyone does reach that level, they may call it a landslide. Yet someone will finish first and it might be the one who spent the most time there, shook the most hands, traveled the shortest distance and seemed most approachable. That could be Buttigieg or Klobuchar. At the moment one seems likely, the other unlikely, but things can change fast. Don't be surprised if it's not the obvious favorite. Trump was second with 24%. He thought he was going to win, but few others did. Whatever the polls said, his campaign was still considered an oddity. The second place candidate this year might be an oddity. If so, that would mean Steyer ends up in second place. The other characteristic of second place was that it was much closer to third than first. That's likely this year as well. No one expects second place to be 24%, but at the moment if anyone finishes first by 3% that will defy the expectations. As the primaries approached, people expected JEB Bush to win. Of course they knew someone would give him trouble. Trump seemed likely to cause trouble but lose. Obviously someone with no longterm chance would do well in Iowa, but I don't think they thought the longshot and Trump would be first and second. At present Bernie is in the Trump position and no one will be surprised if he loses by 3% or finishes second. If one of the handshake people is first and Bernie second, no one should be surprised either. Is anyone ready for Bernie and Buttigieg to be the last 2 active candidates? That brings us to third place: Rubio at 23%. That was the real surprise in Iowa. There's always an upstart. This gave us 2 upstarts. What the pundits never understood was that JEB had none of the inevitability they assigned to Hillary. Republicans didn't vote for him because he was the son of the second best Republican President of the past 50 years. They evaluated him against the other governors in the race. He finished sixth in Iowa, first among the 5 Governors in the race. Rubio represented a nice man who was not JEB. Most accepted the inevitability of a JEB nomination, but no one was going to vote for that inevitability unless he really wanted it. In every election there are protest votes. In 2016 these top 3 all represented a different kind of protest. How many of those who voted for the top 3 really had a passion for one of these men? We can only guess, but I'm sure if they had ranked voting JEB would have been everyone's second choice. Like Biden, everyone would have been content with a JEB victory, but few were passionate about it. There was obviously no passion at all for Biden in 2008 and if there's more now I would call it disgust rather than passion. The party is not what it was and those who liked it as it was will vote for Biden. In other words, they want to make the Democratic Party great again. The equivalent of Rubio might be Klobuchar. The equivalent of Cruz might be Warren (temperament-wise). Don't be surprised if Biden fails to make the top 3. In fourth place was Ben Carson at 9%. Right now there appear to be 4 candidates between 15 and 20. Can 3 of them rise a bit while one drops to 9%? Of course they can. One of them dropping to 9% should surprise no one. Isn't it strange though that Carson got 9% from Republicans in white Iowa? Isn't it stranger that the 2 Hispanics combined for 50% and the 3 minorities for nearly 60%. Since Obama is half-white, how many votes did a black man really get in Iowa and elsewhere? So the bottom of the top 4 might be below 10%, might be far from the top 3 and might be someone no one thought had a chance. If one of the present top 4 drops, could he or she not drop even further than 9% so someone else gets fourth place? That could be any of them, but can it be Patrick and restore the party's reputation as inclusive? Of the 4 top candidates the one most likely to drop this low is Buttigieg. No matter what reaches you first about a candidate, sooner or later you have to ask yourself, “Can this guy really run the country?” If Iowans think, he could get 9%. Even that would be above what he gets as a protest vote or from his small but loyal base constituency. Can Biden drop that low? Yes he can, if the other 3 have passionate followers and a fifth candidate comes close. Can Warren drop that low? I think she can but only if Klobuchar overtakes her. The latest polls have the 3 females combining for about 25% and I think that will hold up, so if Warren is fourth with 9%, Klobuchar gets about 13%. Can Bernie drop to 9%? He can not, but he might finish fourth. The big shock in 2016 is that JEB was not among the top 4. They all tried hard. JEB did not, but he did something. In fifth place though was the man that looked like trouble: Rand Paul. He didn't inherit many of his father's votes either. The big shocker was that Paul dropped out immediately to seek another term in the Senate. That changed things later. 4% is nothing to brag about, but the likely winner was behind him. New Hampshire looked receptive. With other candidates dropping out that night Paul had an opening. So who will finish fifth this time, and will that be the end of his or her campaign, or the beginning? Of the likely top 5 the most likely to drop out after finishing fifth is Klobuchar. At the moment everyone expects her to finish fifth. If she does come in that low though, she limps to New Hampshire with a week to introduce herself to strangers. While she spent lots of time in Iowa, she didn't concentrate too heavily on New Hampshire. There she faces 3 candidates with home field advantage, the inevitability of Biden and the hard work of others in the state. If 9 active candidates remain she might finish eighth. Does she have a grand strategy for South Carolina or Nevada? I don't think so. At best she gets a great showing in Iowa, enough to crack 10% in New Hampshire, avoids the bottom in South Carolina and Nevada and tries to win Minnesota and one more state somewhere super Tuesday. Even then she might be too far behind. Can Biden drop to fifth? I think he can, with a Klobuchar or Steyer surge. Steyer is looking elsewhere, but someone like Delaney could pull out the big guns. Delaney is a lot like Rubio when considered one on one with Biden, a rival from the same region and also the type of man we could all live with. JEB was sixth with 2%. After that it was close all the way down. Fiorina finished seventh, 11 votes ahead of Kasich. In a Democratic caucus the margins that separated the remaining candidates would be ties. A 3-way tie for tenth, ninth (with 12th place rounded off to zero), or eighth should surprise no one. The bottom 6 were all 2% or lower. Gilmore was below other. The question now is can the bottom 6 Democrats this year combine for only 12%. I don't think so. At present the top 4 are polling between 15 and 20%. Let's say they stay in that range and average 16%. That's 64%. With 12% for the bottom 6 the fifth and sixth candidates would have to combine for 24%. That makes the fifth candidate a heartbeat out of fourth. If the bottom 6 combine for 18%, averaging 3% each, we get 64 plus 18 for 82%. Then the remaining 2 candidates average 9%. 10-8, 11-7, 12-6 are possible. That puts fifth just behind fourth and sixth barely ahead of seventh. With that out of the way we can consider the candidates themselves. Can one of the 6 who made the last debate drop out of the top 6, and who might replace him? The most likely is Steyer. He could easily drop behind Yang. I think he might be behind Yang in Iowa polling and Yang has good reason to go into high gear now. Bennet, Gabbard and Delaney all might be out after Iowa. Possibly at least one of them has decided to ignore Iowa results, pushing hard somewhere else, but it's still better to get more votes than fewer. My next thought was about the 2008 Democratic Iowa caucus. First I considered who finished ninth. As you may recall there were 8 Democrats in the debates that year. The bottom 2 were Gravel, briefly in this race too, and Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich was trying for the second time. I wondered if there was a former Congressman, millionaire or Mayor in the race that year. I found a list of names, none I recognized, so no qualified person was kept out. Next I looked at the results. Obama won with 940 votes, Edwards 744, Hillary 737, Bill Richardson 53, Biden 23, uncommitted 3 and Chris Dodd 1. That means Gravel and Kucinich had zero. So it is entirely possible that some of the candidates will be listed with zero and None of the Above will likely finish ahead of some. Bloomberg isn't trying. Patrick got a late start. Those 2 should be last. Of the other 4 Bennet started last. Delaney and Gabbard started very early. Yang is fighting with Steyer and Klobuchar. So the bottom six should be Yang, Gabbard, Delaney, Bennet, Patrick and Bloomberg in that order. If that should be the results, with Klobuchar fifth and Steyer sixth, expect to lose Klobuchar, Gabbard and Bennet. None of them have good prospects in New Hampshire.
