The 2016 Republican primary will be novel in a number of ways, but is the outcome also predictable? And if so, what does that say about all the attention we lavish on the campaign?
I'm going to have a column in The Week either later today or tomorrow on this topic, but there are some things I wanted to discuss first. To begin with, depending on how you look at it, this is the first Republican nomination contest of the modern era that doesn't begin with an overwhelming favorite. It's often said that Republicans have in the past nominated whoever was "next in line," but it's more particular than that: It's usually been the person who ran in the last contested primary and came in second. The only Republican candidate who got the nomination on his first try in this period was George W. Bush, and he seemed to benefit from the fact that a lot of voters early on confused him with his father. Just look at this list of contested primaries:
- 1980: Reagan (3rd try) beats G.H.W. Bush
- 1988: G.H.W. Bush (2nd try) beats Dole
- 1996: Dole (2nd try) beats Forbes
- 2000: G.W. Bush (1st try) beats McCain
- 2008: McCain (2nd try) beats Romney
- 2012 Romney (2nd try) beats clown car
The only potential candidates this time around who have run before are Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, both of whom have a pretty hard ceiling on the amount of support they can get. The natural continuation of that pattern would be the nomination of Jeb Bush, the candidate who is raising huge amounts of money and fits the profile of past Republican nominees (older, choice of the donor class, conservative but not radical, etc.).
The same pattern has held in Democratic nomination contests too, although not quite as strictly, with the early frontrunner usually winning. The exception was 2008, when Barack Obama became the first candidate in this era to overcome a rival who was the overwhelming favorite. Is it possible that Scott Walker or Marco Rubio or somebody else could be this year's Obama? Sure, it's possible. But maybe not likely.
But if this pattern-early frontrunner is crowned, new and interesting challenger emerges, early frontrunner stumbles along the way but prevails-is so common, is there much point in all the time we put in analyzing the campaign? This is the same question raised by the "fundamentals" analyses of general elections, which say that just by knowing a few data points like economic growth, you can pretty accurately predict what the outcome of the general election will be.
The answer is yes, because election campaigns aren't just about who wins. In the course of the campaign, we learn a lot about the person who eventually becomes president. The parties define themselves in important ways. They set an agenda. (If Barack Obama hadn't spent so much time in the primaries debating health care reform with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, would he have felt compelled to pursue it so early in his presidency? Maybe not.) They help us understand the electorate.
And more than that, campaigns are fascinating, in all their chaotic, maddening, horrifying and occasionally even inspiring glory. Even if we're pretty sure how it's all going to end.
