Stage 3: Iowa and New Hampshire
When it happens: Feb. 1 and Feb. 9, based on the provisional calendar.
Potential threat to Trump: Middling performance in one or both states, either in an absolute sense or relative to polls.
Eventually, we’ll have some real votes to test the polls against. The odds are that the polls will be pretty far off in the first few states; they’re historically not very accurate in primaries and caucuses. One reason for this, perhaps the principal one, is because turnout is hard to predict. Trump has built some semblance of an organization in Iowa (he has less of one in New Hampshire), but it probably won’t be the best in the state at persuading voters to turn out.
Despite the relatively poor track record of polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, however, they have a major influence on how the results are interpreted by the press. Historically, the candidates who get the most favorable media coverage and receive the biggest “bounces” out of Iowa and New Hampshire are not those who perform the best in an absolute sense but instead those who beat the media’s expectations. It’s possible that Trump will master expectations management between now and Iowa, but, given his tendency to trumpet every favorable poll, he could also set himself up for a fall. A Trump who finishes in third place with 14 percent of the vote in Iowa won’t have much to brag about.
California craps more than 6 electoral votes. Bill Clinton, George Bush and Ronald Reagan all lost Iowa. Huckabee, Gephardt, and Tom Harkin have won Iowa. What a joke.
