Iowa caucuses just 100 days away: Shake-ups ahead?
Editor's Note: This story has been updated following the Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner.
Iowa is just less than 100 days from stepping up to the plate to take the first crack at voting for the next leader of the free world.
There are plenty of opportunities for shake-ups before Feb. 1. In the space of one week, each party will have marquee Iowa events to showcase its candidates: the Democrats’ Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, which proved to be the turning point for Barack Obama eight years ago, was Saturday; the GOP’s “Growth and Opportunity Party” is next weekend.
MORE: Full coverage from the JJ Dinner
The biggest reality check is how much can change in 100 days. A hundred days ago, almost universal Democratic preoccupation focused on Hillary Clinton as the eventual nominee. Two “oh, please” candidates — liberal fist-shaker Bernie Sanders and mad-dog conservative Donald Trump — were on the rise, but their staying power was very much in doubt.
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On the Republican side, neighboring Gov. Scott Walker was a brand new candidate and the front-runner in Iowa. Big-state Gov. Rick Perry was still confident that his old-school strategy of Pizza Ranch meet-and-greets would carry him across the finish line in Iowa. The Jeb Bush campaign, second in national polling after Trump, was still considered an unstoppable national juggernaut.
To forecast what will happen in the next 100 days, look at who has the most millions in the campaign bank account, who polling shows has room to grow, who’s reeling in the most influential endorsements and who’s the subject of conventional wisdom chatter, politics watchers say.In the space of four days this week, Democrats lost three choices for president: Vice President Joe Biden opted against running, and former Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee both bowed out.
Or, “if you really want to know who is going to win, take a look at prediction markets,” said Thomas Rietz, a finance professor at the University of Iowa and organizer of the Iowa Electronic Markets.
One market, Pivit, was predicting that Ben Carson would win the GOP Iowa caucuses long before the news broke late this week that the retired doctor had cracked the Trump ceiling and burst into front-runner status. On Friday, Pivit increased Carson’s odds of winning the caucuses to 40 percent, followed by Ted Cruz (19 percent), Marco Rubio (16 percent) and Trump (15 percent).
Iowa is most famous for winnowing the field, not for picking the eventual winner.
As of Friday, the real-money exchange PredictWise thinks Rubio has the best probability of snagging the GOP nomination (32 percent), followed by Bush (21 percent) and Trump (18 percent). On the Democratic side, Clinton is favored to win the nomination (89 percent to Sanders’ 11 percent chance).
100 days out: Clinton, Sanders to battle on organizing
Advocates boast of the predictive markets' track record. Take the 2012 race, when "flavor of the month" candidates repeatedly burst into the lead in Iowa and national polls, only to quickly fade.
A single day in that race's last 100 days highlighted two dramatic turns of fortune: Saturday, Dec. 3. 2011. That morning, Herman Cain, the Iowa and national poll leader in the fall, announced he was suspending his campaign. He had been damaged by allegations of sexual harassment by four woman and news that a fifth woman and he had carried on a long-term affair.
That evening, The Des Moines Register announced new Iowa Poll results, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich stood atop the field.
But he, too, would fade before caucus day, as former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum starting gaining ground on poll leader Mitt Romney, the eventual nominee, and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. After a vote-counting controversy, Santorum was judged the eventual caucus winner.
Yet through all the ups and downs of the caucus lead-up year and deep into the primaries, the predictive markets maintained Romney as the likely nominee. How do they do it?
“We know that the establishment generally prevails,” said David Rothschild, an economist at Microsoft Research who runs PredictWise, “by some combination of voting rules, money, power and noise.”
100-day mile markers
Saturday, Oct. 24: 100 days before the Iowa caucuses.
Thursday, July 16: 100 days ago.
Monday, Feb. 1, 2016: The Iowa caucuses.