Not A Big Mystery

A perplexed Kevin Drum writes:

On the Democratic side, it was a very impressive clean sweep for Barack Obama, including two big caucus wins in Nebraska and Washington. Which reminds me of something: I'm a little puzzled about Obama's consistent success in caucuses, which usually seems to get chalked up to his background in community organizing. Somehow, though, that doesn't really seem like a persuasive explanation. After all, I'm sure Hillary Clinton's team knows perfectly well how to organize in a caucus state. And yet Obama has won every caucus state but one, most of them by wide margins. Does anybody have a good explanation for this? (And no, "Obama is teh awesome" doesn't count as a good explanation.)

Kevin is not alone in his confusion. All this week I've heard television and radio pundits struggle to explain this phenomenon. The most common explanations offered are that Obama has devoted more resources to these states than Clinton and that he has done a better job of organizing within them.

Both of those things may be true, but they are not the cause of Obama's success in these states. The Clinton campaign has plenty of financial resources and organizational know-how. If they thought they could compete in these states, they would have devoted more resources to them and made greater efforts to organize.

The reason Obama is doing so well in caucus states is because there is a major enthusiasm gap between the supporters of the two candidates. Caucuses, by their nature, are low-turnout, high-time commitment events. The people who bother to show up are the people who are really excited about their candidate, and Obama just has more of these people in his camp than Clinton does.

Voting in a primary, on the other hand, involves less of a committment. All you have to do is show up and pull a lever. Many of the people who show up to vote in primaries have a preferred candidate, but their preference is not as strong. They care enough to vote, but their preference isn't so strong that they'd be willing to volunteer hours of their time to register that preference.

In other words, Obama has a higher percentage of devoted, enthusiastic supporters than Clinton does and that disparity is much more of a factor in caucuses than in primaries. It's the same reason (though on a very different scale) that Ron Paul does much better in caucuses than in primaries (he pulled in 21% in Washington last night). His followers are very devoted.

And while I'm on the subject of the election, there's another piece of pundit conventional wisdom that I find deeply wrong. There's this idea out there that the longer it takes the Democrats to choose a nominee, the more of a disadvantage it will be in the general election. Indeed, the primary calendar was front-loaded the way it was in hopes of having the nominee selected as early as possible. The idea is that the sooner the nominee is chosen, the more time the party has to rally around that person, to raise money, and to come up with a campaign strategy for winning the general election.

I think is completely wrong-headed, and what happened in 2004 illustrates this perfectly. John Kerry was at the height of his national popularity when he was winning primary contests in a hard-fought Democratic race. He was getting lots of free media attention. People were coming out and endorsing him. He was on television every week giving victory speeches and in the newspaper under headlines declaring his victory in one state after another. But once he wrapped up the nomination, all that positive, free media disappeared and the Republican party started launching attacks and building its anti-Kerry press narratives. By the time November rolled around, Kerry had been called a flip-flopper so many times, by so many people, over so many months that even many Democrats and independents had thoroughly internalized this criticism.

The Republican party is very good at demonizing and building negative press narratives about whomever the Democratic nominee turns out to be. The sooner a nominee is selected, the more time they have to demonize him (or her). And those attacks are all the press talks about because the primary race is effectively over and there's not much else to talk about.

Assuming this primary process eventually leads to an undisputed winner (a big if at this point), it is far better for both Clinton and Obama that this process drag out as long as possible. As long as the outcome of the primary remains in question, the press coverage will continue to focus on the primary race and not the general election matchup. That helps both Clinton and Obama. It gives them lots of free and largely positive media coverage. They'll continue to appear on television debating each other and giving victory speeches. And when a nominee does eventually emerge, the Republicans will have less time to demonize and caricature that person, less time to inject their preferred narratives into the media. Choosing a nominee early is bad for the nominee.