Iowa caucuses likely to be on January 3rd

The Iowa Republican Party appears to have finally set a date for the Iowa caucuses: January 3rd. It was thought that Iowa would wait for Gardner to decide New Hampshire's primary date, but they are not doing so. This means that Gardner will either set his state's contest on Tuesday, January 8th, or will have to jump to December. Most likely is that he will settle on the 8th.

The other uncertainty is what Iowa Democrats will do. Many in the party wanted to set the caucus on the 5th to put a bit more distance with New Year's, but will they really want to organize caucuses on two different nights? This is definitely possible, since both parties have to caucus in separate locations anyway due to the electoral process, but still unlikely due to the unduly complication this would create.

January 3rd then it is. For now... Given how much chaos there has been in the 2008 primary calendar, never rule out more last-minute changes and leapfrogging. But January 3rd is already the earliest the caucuses have ever taken place. In 2004, Iowa voted on January 19th!

This new calendar could have crucial consequences, especially on the Democratic field:

• Obama will be most damaged by the new caucus date. January 3rd means that college students will not yet have returned to school, and they are a key constituency Obama is counting on to be competitive in the state. In 2004, Howard Dean was hoping for a boost in youth turnout -- and he failed to get it, as the average caucus-goer age remained very high. This time around, the Obama campaign was expected to put significant resources in organizing students and getting them to the caucus place, and this throws a wrench in their entire strategy. Yes, vacation time also means that many students from Iowa will be back at home -- but how much more difficult will it be for the campaign to get them organized, contacted, transported...


• Turnout will also certainly be lower overall, though it is unclear who that would benefit most. The most dedicated voters would only go spend a night politicking early in January, which would probably help the candidates who are best organized in the state, most notably Mitt Romney. On the Democratic side, CW would assume Edwards has the most dedicated base, but Clinton got 48% among voters who had already made up their mind in yesterday's Des Moines Register poll.


• The third key consideration is that the caucuses in general will not be paid that much attention from the rest of the country, for who will be thinking about politics that close to the holidays, and how much coverage will the caucus get? This appearance of unimportance might also be strengthened by the fact that there is now more time between Iowa and post-NH states. This would obviously hugely benefit the candidate who has the most to lose from Iowa, namely Hillary Clinton (and also, to a lesser extent, Rudy Giuliani), as an slip-up would not be consequential as it could be in mid-January.

• Finally, this also yields good news for Mitt Romney. With the caucuses set so early in January, his Republican rivals will have little time to challenge Romney's dominance in Iowa polls: Front runners traditionally stumble only in the week to ten days before Iowa votes (see Dean in 2004) as voters come back to the race and look at it with different eyes, but this ten days window this time will basically be the holiday period! Voters will pay very little attention to what candidates will be saying then, and Romney would not have to fear a last minute surge from his opponents.
  

So the bottom line seems to be this is good news for Hillary. Though I am not at all set on this, so if anyone disagrees, shoot away!