Why Iowa?

by Redlawsk, David P.; Tolbert, Caroline J.; Donovan, Todd

• ISBN13: 9780226706962
• ISBN10: 0226706966
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

If Barack Obama had not won in Iowa, most commentators believe that he would not have been able to go on to capture the Democratic nomination for president.Why Iowa?offers the definitive account of those early weeks of the campaign season: from how the Iowa caucuses work and what motivates the candidates' campaigns, to participation and turnout, as well as the lingering effects that the campaigning had on Iowa voters. Demonstrating how "what happens in Iowa" truly reverberates throughout the country, five-time Iowa precinct caucus chair David P. Redlawsk and his coauthors take us on an inside tour of one of the most media-saturated and speculated-about campaign events in American politics. Considering whether a sequential primary system, in which early, smaller states such as Iowa and New Hampshire have such a tremendous impact is fair or beneficial to the country as a whole, the authors here demonstrate that not only is the impact warranted, but it also reveals a great deal about informational elements of the campaigns. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this sequential system does confer huge benefits on the nominating process while Iowa's particularly well-designed caucus systemextensively explored here for the first timebrings candidates' arguments, strengths, and weaknesses into the open and under the media's lens.

Author Biography

David P. Redlawsk is professor of political science and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Caroline J. Tolbert is professor of political science at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Todd Donovan is professor of political science at Western Washington University. They are all the authors, editors, or coauthors of numerous previous books.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Framing the Argument
Why Iowa? Because the Rules Matter	p. 3
What We Know and What We Don't about Presidential Nomination Campaigns	p. 18
Caucus Rules
Iowa Caucus Rules	p. 45
Candidate Campaigns in Iowa: Grassroots or Mass Media Politics?	p. 63
The Iowa Grass Roots: Participation in the 2008 Caucuses	p. 86
Decided by the Few: Are the Iowa Caucuses Representative?	p. 118
Sequential Voting Rules
Effects of Iowa and New Hampshire in U.S. Presidential Nomination Contests 1976-2008	p. 141
The Micro Foundations of Momentum	p. 157
Participation and Engagement in 2008 Caucuses and Primaries	p. 178
Changing the Rules
Reforming the Presidential Nominating Process	p. 213
Why Iowa? Continuity and Change in Presidential Nominations	p. 240
Multivariate Tables for Chapter 7	p. 257
Multivariate Tables for Chapter 8	p. 261
Multivariate Tables for Chapter 9	p. 265
Multivariate Tables for Chapter 10	p. 269
Notes	p. 273
References	p. 289
Index	p. 303
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