The now-deceased Iowa Straw Poll had become an unsustainable exercise. Republican presidential candidates felt like they were being shaken down by the Iowa GOP. The straw poll never had much predictive power about who would win the nomination and in 2011 it wasn’t much of a barometer for the Iowa caucuses.
Candidates like Jeb Bush had every incentive to skip the straw poll. Win it and everyone will say Bush simply bought the straw poll with the money he raised. Compete and lose, you get a bunch of news stories about what an embarrassment your performance is. In Bush’s case, this could be true with an insufficiently impressive victory, as defined by the media.
John McCain blew off the straw poll in 2007 and was the nominee in 2008. Some top-tier candidates this year were sure to follow his example.
But that doesn’t mean the straw poll had absolutely nothing going for it. In addition to being a great bit political theater, it played some role in the winnowing process for the Republican field. With upwards of 20 recognizable candidates possibly running, that will be missed.
Missed by whom, you ask? Debate organizers, for one. The rules for the debates are already being criticized as too restrictive, but allowing everyone on the stage runs the risk of nobody getting enough speaking time to put together an intelligent argument. Sometimes, debate participation criteria end up looking fairly arbitrary. Mike Gravel, who had been gone from the Senate since 1981, was allowed in the early debates; Buddy Roemer and Gary Johnson, who had been governors more recently, weren’t (Johnson did get into one debate).
The Iowa Straw Poll generally leaves the field smaller than before. Dan Quayle dropped out in 1999 after finishing behind Alan Keyes in Ames. The straw poll finished off Lamar Alexander and eventually Elizabeth Dole too. Tim Pawlenty abandoned the race after finishing third. He had staked his entire candidacy on a win.
Many of the commentators dancing on the straw poll’s grave treat Pawlenty’s withdrawal as some kind of grave injustice. In retrospect, one can dream up a scenario where a more patient Pawlenty stayed in the race and was able to capitalize on Mitt Romney’s weakness.
The truth is that Pawlenty. Quayle, Alexander and Dole were candidates who weren’t going anywhere. The Iowa Straw Poll may have been an expensive wake-up call, especially for Pawlenty, but it was what it took to alert these candidates to political reality.
Similarly, the straw poll is an additional data point besides scientific polling debate organizers can use to keep candidates off the stage. In 2011, Thaddeus McCotter wasn’t registering in the national polls and he had finished last in Ames. He was out of the running by the end of September.
The straw poll served as an early indicator of how strong Christian Right candidates Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee would be in the caucuses. Robertson finished second in Iowa in 1988, ahead of the eventual nominee George Bush, and Mike Huckabee won.
Candidates with real support always survived straw poll setbacks and the contenders who were knocked out of the race by the straw poll never had much of a chance to begin with.
Ultimately, none of this was enough to save the Iowa Straw Poll. But was the event formerly held in Ames really a more gauche way of narrowing the field than the debate gaffes we’re now likely to use instead?
