Lose Valiantly and Win
by Patrick Ruffini :: January 21st, 2008 10:54 pmNow that Florida is upon us, the neverending debate about Rudy’s Florida strategy continues over at The Corner (McCarthy, Ponnuru, Steyn, Lowry). I think I agree with Ramesh:
Giuliani presumably didn’t think he can win any of these early contests and get momentum that way. But he lost the chance to get attention just by running. He didn’t just miss a chance to get good headlines the day after the votes; he missed the chance to get many headlines during the weeks leading up to them. Reporters can’t be blamed for paying attention to the early contests, and paying disproportionate attention to the candidates who were running in them.
Is it any coincidence that the three top candidates right now are the ones who didn’t try to game the system and instead ran national campaigns: McCain, Romney, and Huckabee?
By doing this, these candidates showed their mettle to voter in later states. Giuliani cratering in New York is not a matter of voters there disliking him, but a testament to the fact that so many refuse to take him seriously as a Presidential candidate after six weeks of mocking coverage. It’s easier to shift to their second choice (McCain) than to rationalize voting for someone who doesn’t appear to be “all-in.” A jumbled field does not call for strategic withdrawal. It means a political climate that is more forgiving of candidates who fight valiantly and lose.
Even in states where McCain, Romney, and Huckabee knew they would lose, they ran. McCain did a few Iowa events, and finished fourth. The Baptist preacher ran a spirited campaign in New Hampshire, and earned respect by finishing third with 12% of the vote. He then went on to Michigan, and got 15% of the vote. Neither of these setbacks caused him significant slippage in South Carolina, and he probably only lost because Romney and Thompson wouldn’t completely leave the field. And Romney didn’t lose points for getting 15% in South Carolina after pulling out of the state.
So what have we learned from the sequencing of these primaries about how and where it is most important to compete?
First off, the early calendar has shown us that Iowa and New Hampshire matter inordinately more than Michigan, South Carolina, Nevada, and Florida. Campaign coverage reaches a crescendo during those two events. The headlines auto-collected by my 2008 Presidential Wire tell the story. Here are the number of headlines mentioning each of the early states collected in the last 30 days:
Iowa 1,472
New Hampshire 1,003
South Carolina 468
Nevada 422
Florida 183
And what of media consumers? These trendlines are borne out in what voters are searching for online. This is the Google Trends chart for the elections in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, etc.
In terms of public attention, each primary matters less than the one before (though we don’t have peak Sunday data for SC/NV). If follows that each primary therefore generates less and less momentum. That may point to a flaw in the Giuliani strategy of hoping for a huge momentum boost out of Florida that would carry him into a 22-state shootout on February 5th. Even the primaries that generated a huge amount of earned media did not necessarily crown the next event’s winner. Unless Rudy utterly crushed McCain in Florida, does it follow that Rudy would regain pole position in California and Illinois, not to mention the Tri-State area?
McCain and Romney have emerged as the most serious candidates based not necessarily on decisive victories but because of their overall performance. The evenly divided field has not created the multi-car pileup Giuliani had hoped for, but a field of bruised, half-dead candidates who still fight on and retain double digit support.
Even losses in Iowa and New Hampshire were not as fatal as many pundits presumed. Hillary is a good example, of course, but more tellingly, who would have predicted that Mitt Romney would still be around after sinking all that money into Iowa and New Hampshire and “winning the silver”?
The conventional wisdom says that if you fight hard in a state and lose, you’re done. (Giuliani’s withdrawals were predicated upon that assumption.) That’s only true if you pre-announce a single-state stand (Thompson in SC, and now Giuliani in FL.) But for candidates with real multi-state strategies, it is demonstrably false. Had Giuliani brought his A game to the early contests and lost more than he won, he would arguably be in the same or better position than he is in Florida today — and he would still be leading in his February 5th strongholds.
In a field like this, individual victories matter less, but losses matter less too. And just competing everywhere seems to count for a lot more than people would have thought a few weeks ago.
Tagged: rudy giuliani 
strategy
Comments (3) 
Trackbacks (0) 
del.icio.us 
digg it 
subscribe
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
a postscript: As much as many people dislike McCain or ROmney, its hard not to respect their scrappiness — McCain sticking in there and giving it his all, even after his campaign imploded over the summer, and Romney ploughing through despite all the highly negative press and the thinly veiled contempt from the other candidates. Good for them. And good for Huckabee. Their guts and stamina is what Rudy’s now competing against.
What about all the last minute campaigning Rudy did in New Hampshire? He put up a fight in the that state and still almost lost to Ron Paul. Even he’d fought harder in the earlier states, I doubt he’d do much better going into FL on 2/5. The more voters see of the guy, the less they like him.
EXACTLY!! This is what I’ve been saying all along. Whoever ran Rudy’s campaign is in disconnect with the real human beings who decide these things: voting is not a chess game. Real people are involved in the election process, for goodness’ sake, and people want to see somebody actually running. The fact that Rudy did so EXTREMELY poorly is because he thought he was declaring good strategy by spinning that he wasn’t campaigning in those states (when he actually was), but what he told the voters in those states is: “I’m so great, I don’t need you — I’ll win without you.” So they punished him by giving him numbers in the single digits, which look a heck of a lot worse than if he had lost respectably by competing.
Well, this points to one thing: if this is who the guy has running his campaign, and we know he’s another Bush-type pusher of those loyal to him (nepotism kinds of appointments), I’m glad he lost so spectacularly, because who wants somebody who runs a campaign this stupidly and out-of touch with the american people running the country.