Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and author of the forthcoming book, “Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.” Follow him on Twitter: @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
Despite an apparent narrow victory in Iowa, Pete Buttigieg is unlikely to experience the same effects that Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama enjoyed after their respective victories there the first time they ran for office.
The results from Monday’s caucuses, assuming they hold, might give the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor a slight boost, but nothing that will transform his standing relative to Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren in the next rounds of voting. He will remain competitive, but this time, Iowa won’t be a game changer.
Why won’t the Iowa caucuses have a similar effect as in those cases? After all, in 1976, Carter, the relatively unknown former Georgia governor, used his strong finish to catapult to victory in New Hampshire. This convinced the media that he was as formidable a candidate as the more experienced Democrats he was running against. The Iowa Democratic chairman called the results “striking.”
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who was then still a mystery to many voters, also benefited from his victory in Iowa. He used it to demonstrate to reporters and voters that he was in fact as electable as his competitor Hillary Clinton, seen as more experienced and “safer” on paper.
But this time around, if his lead holds, it’s doubtful Buttigieg’s results in Iowa will add up to much. The chaos that ensued in the hours that followed the caucuses was devastating for all the candidates who performed well. Given how few delegates are at stake, the real benefit of doing well in Iowa has been the media coverage that follows the event. This was Jimmy Carter’s essential insight in 1976. He flew back to New York that same evening so that he could appear on morning news shows.
In Iowa this time around, with most of the media reporting on the notorious app and the breakdown in communications, Buttigieg lost 24 hours of valuable coverage. His premature victory announcement didn’t help. The subsequent decision to then announce the results without the full data made things even worse. In certain respects, the biggest bump went to New Hampshire, which now has a better chance to be the first vote in 2024 after this show of incompetence in Iowa.
Indeed, the impact of a surge in Iowa is not the same as in years past, since it is no longer the first “big event” in campaigns. And some of the momentum gained from a big showing in Iowa is dampened by the ups and downs we see in the constant political news coverage – a central feature of our landscape.
The closeness of this multi-candidate race also matters. In 2020, Democrats are in a situation where several major candidates are all performing very well.
If the current results hold, the margins are extremely narrow. Most of the polls continue to show that other candidates are doing well in upcoming states, such as Sanders in New Hampshire, where he seems to be surging ahead.
According to my “Politics and Polls” podcast cohost, Sam Wang, the Iowa effect has historically been dampened in these kinds of situations. It is easy to see how Buttigieg could find himself struggling to keep up by Super Tuesday.
For many, this Democratic competition is also dominated by fears of a second term for Donald Trump: no other issue is as important. Former President Gerald Ford did not stimulate the same level of concern for Democrats in 1976 – nobody could match Richard Nixon – and in 2008 former President George W. Bush wasn’t on the ticket.
This time around, voters are desperate to figure out who can defeat Trump, fearing a reprise of 2016, when they underestimated his political appeal in certain parts of the country. This anxiety will amplify the shortcomings of Buttigieg’s resume to many Democratic voters. His relative inexperience, his youth and concerns over his core values will remain huge liabilities. A strong performance in Iowa will not wipe these away.
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To be clear, none of this is to discount Buttigieg as a candidate or to dismiss the possibility that he can win the nomination. But Iowa won’t offer him the magic that Carter and Obama enjoyed from this state.
The chaos in Iowa is more indicative of the state of play in the party this election, an open-ended and somewhat unwieldy competition that will take many more months to sort out – and maybe even go on until the convention.
