Back on December 30th Veritas called for the caucus results to be made more meaningful then would be possible with the skewed claims predictably accompanying a victory by plurality Make the Iowa Caucuses as Meaningful as Possible https://www.veritaspac.com/?p=77 The partial solution proposed was to record the attendees second most favorite candidate. The reasons were elaborated on at the time. The request was sent to the Republican Party of Iowa State Central Committee but no acknowledgment was received from any recipient. Had someone championed it, a memo sent out to a representative number of precincts might have been organized.
On caucus night yours truly as chairman of his precinct caucus (the largest in Davenport and second largest in Scott County) asked for the will of the attendees regarding conducting the unobtrusive experiment of placing on the back of the ballot one’s second choice for the Presidential nomination. It was to be voluntary. It was established that ONLY the first preference as indicated in the marking area of the pre-printed ballot would be phoned in as the official result. That OUR caucus would count the “second choice” separately and that those (raw) results would be made available later in the evening, which they were. There was no objection.
The table below sets forth those results and with some additional analysis serves to verify the potential added meaningfulness of conducting this simple project on a wider scale. Finishing second did not translate into being the second choice of the caucus attendees.
FIRST & SECOND CHOICE COMPARISON
PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCE POLL
2012 IOWA CAUC– — USES
DAVENPORT PRECINCT D 6-3
FIRST SECOND
RAW % CHOICE CANDIDATE CHOICE* % RAW
106 40.2 1 ROMNEY 3 19.9 36
74 28.1 2 SANTORUM 1 26 47
40 15.2 3 GINGRICH 2 24.3 44
31 11.8 4 PAUL 4 9.4 17
9 3.4 5 PERRY 5 7.7 14
3 1.1 6 BACHMANN 6 7.2 13
0 0 7 HUNTSMAN 7 3.9 7
0 0 7 CAIN** 7 1.7 3
0 WRITE –IN 1
263 99.9 TOTALS 100.1 181
Compliance was voluntary. Of the 263 caucus attendees (all certified attendees did participate in the established “first choice” preference poll) 181 participated in the “second choice” preference poll (69%). The implications regarding those who did not participate are open to conjecture. Certainly it could be that the project’s usefulness was not adequately explained and it was ignored. It could also be that those individuals had no strong feelings or conflicted feelings as to second choice and decided to leave it blank. It could also be that in part there was revulsion by some towards all the others, the “my guy or the highway” attitude.
Davenport precinct D 6-3 has certain socioeconomic demographics that might have roughly predicted some of the raw results. It is also true that the results in this precinct do not comport to the over all state rankings. There is no average precinct, only an average of precincts. But those predictable factors and this limited test should not denigrate the usefulness of a broader study based on the relationships or non-relationships hinted at by this snapshot. A meta study along these lines could refine a vice-president choice. Certainly a future more thorough undertaking would anticipate the short comings of this little experiment and prepare accordingly.
At a glance the data as regards those participating indicates that Romney’s second choice support was not as strong as his first choice support, but was still strong. Santorum “won” the second choice plurality derby. This resulted in his combined first and second choice score comparatively gaining ground on Romney in this precinct. Romney was not as strong a raw second choice performer as Santorum and Gingrich. The most relative gains from this experiment went to Perry Bachmann and Huntsman but their first choice scores were pretty low skewing the relative results.
COMBINED SCORES FIRST CHOICE AND SECOND CHOICE
CANDIDATE RAW COMBINED RANK
ROMNEY 142 1
SANTORUM 121 2
GINGRICH 84 3
PAUL 48 4
PERRY 23 5
BACHMANN 16 6
HUNTSMAN 7 7
While combined scores (see above) provided the same raw ranking as the first choice scores as reported to the RPI they do tell a story. Ron Paul was an even more distant fourth place finisher as a second choice, mustering only 17 of 181 second favorite votes in the precinct, which was also one of the poorest showings relative to his own first choice score. He lost relative combined ground. More permutations and observations, even countervailing could be made here, but the limited data indicated not to get too carried away other than referencing the broad strokes that seem to be present.
Below are a series of tables that might also say something (or nothing).
Methodology: Each ballot indicating a first choice also had their second choice recorded relative to the first choice. Potentially one might determine that candidate X folks were more likely to pick candidate Y as second choice. Note that as mentioned above, 69% of the precinct caucus participated in the second choice balloting. essentially the same percentage for each by candidate first preference also participated. In other words there was no wide divergence such as many of candidate X supporters having no preference for second choice.
DAVENPORT PRECINCT D-6-3- BALLOTS ON FILE
ROMNEY AS FIRST CHOICE (106)
Of the Romney as first choice group (D-6-3) the second choice was:
Bachmann 1
Cain 1
Gingrich 25
Huntsman 5
Paul 9
Perry 1
Santorum 30 — total 72 (68% participating)
PERRY AS FIRST CHOICE (9)
Of the Perry as first choice group (D-6-3) the second choice for them was:
Bachmann 1
Cain 0
Gingrich 3
Huntsman 0
Paul 0
Romney 0
Santorum 2 — total 6 (67% participating)
GINGRICH AS FIRST CHOICE (40)
Of the Gingrich as first choice group (D 6-3), the second choice for them was:
Bachmann 1
Cain 1
Gingrich –
Huntsman 0
Paul 1
Perry 3
Romney 15
Santorum 9 total — 30; (75% participating)
PAUL AS FIRST CHOICE (31)
Of the Paul as first choice group (D 6-3), the second choice for them was:
Bachmann 1
Cain 0
Gingrich 4
Huntsman 2
Paul –
Perry 1
Romney 8
Santorum 6 — total 22; (71% participating)
SANTORUM AS FIRST CHOICE (74)
Of the Santorum as first choice group ( D- 6-3) the second choice for them was:
Bachmann 9
Cain 1
Gingrich 12
Huntsman 0
Paul 7
Perry 9
Romney 13
Santorum – — total 51; (69% participating)
Note: of Bachmann’s 3 first choice votes none participated in the second choice balloting. This should be the result of mere coincidence as any tactical suspicion would be overwrought.
The results above I found “interesting.” It probably only says that my perceptions of the candidates’ compatibilities are sometimes quite different from others’ perceptions. For example it would be interesting to explore why so “many” Paul supporters picked Romney as their second choice. I suspect it could be because Paul and Romney did not run adds against one another in Iowa , they both concentrated on the other candidates (this was widely reported and commented on). Nevertheless the ideological differences between Paul and Romney would seem to be at least as broad in this writer’s humble view as between Paul and the others.
