The Iowa Straw Poll and the Regular Rhythms of the Presidential Nomination Process
FHQ got a sneak peek of Jonathan Bernstein's Friday column on Thursday when we had a chance to chat after my APSA roundtable on the 2020 presidential nomination process . At the time, I agreed with him. Honestly, thoughts of the straw poll that wasn't in Iowa in 2016 had long ago been washed over and displaced with the logjam of events that happened during and since the 2016 cycle. So, sure, perhaps no straw poll meant one fewer winnowing opportunity; one coordination event lost. But the more I thought about it -- and I had time when I was stuck on the T during an outage on the way home that evening -- the more I thought, well, surely there was some event that filled the void that the Ames Straw Poll absence had left behind. Although they were down in number in 2016 -- just like primary debates -- from the 2012 cycle, there were other straw polls that were conducted during the year leading up the first votes being cast in the caucuses in Iowa. Initially, FHQ thought of the fal...