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We surveyed Iowa caucus goers and other Republicans to assess how representative the 2012 caucuses were of Republicans in Iowa. We find that demographically and ideologically, people reporting they would attend the caucus were quite similar to self-identified Iowa Republicans who said they would not caucus. We then model outcomes in Iowa and New Hampshire as a function of mass media expectations and find the model predicts Mitt Romney's Iowa vote share well but underpredicts Rick Santorum's Iowa result substantially. As in previous elections, we find national media attention shifted to a candidate (Santorum) who the media overlooked prior to Iowa and that this likely made Santorum's eventual second-place finish possible. Romney strengthened his front-runner share of media attention by meeting expectations in Iowa and then winning New Hampshire. This study confirms research documenting the important influence that early states have in the nomination process.
The Iowa caucuses became the leadoffpresidential nominating event essentially by accident in 1972, and they have been institutionalized to the point where it is hard to imagine the nominating race starting anywhere else. Once again in 2012 the voting for president kicked offin Iowa. But unlike 2008, when the contests for both political parties were wide open, only the Republicans had a contested nomination. Democratic President Barack Obama, who was running unopposed for a second term, won more than 98% of votes from those who attended the Democratic caucuses.1 Although the outcome for the Democrats was clear, a great deal of uncertainty surrounded the Republican results, when on caucus night Mitt Romney was declared the winner by eight votes over Rick Santorum, only to have that overturned two weeks later when the party announced that Santorum had won the Iowa caucuses after all (Fahrenthold andWilgoren 2012). Overall, around 121,000 Republicans were reported to have attended, equal to about 19% of registered Republicans in Iowa (Iowa GOP 2012). This turnout was up only slightly from four years prior.
It is not our purpose here to get into the weeds of what actually happened in the 2012 Iowa Republican Caucus. Suffice it to say that the challenges of counting the ballots-which are cast in over 1,700 precincts generally on paper and counted by local caucus leaders-provided new fodder for those who...