How Iowa Voted

You can find dozens of articles proclaiming that Marco Rubio has momentum entering the Iowa caucuses. In general, it’s worthwhile to be suspicious whenever political pundits reference the Big Mo’. In this case, however, Rubio is at least moving in the right direction. He enters tonight at 16.4 percent in our Iowa polling average, his high point of the cycle and up roughly 4 points over the past 10 days. Might Rubio still be a little overhyped? It’s fair to cast some shade on his campaign’s goal-post-moving spin on when he’ll go from “strong thirds” into actually winning states. And there’s been little sign of growth for him in New Hampshire and other states. But on the other hand, it’s surprising we haven’t seen more Rubio hype. As Jonathan Chait notes, one of the supposed advantages held by “establishment” candidates like Rubio is that party elites work to talk up their chances and portray their position in a more favorable light. Rubio earned only 4 percent of network news coverage of the Republican primary in January. One of the reasons for Donald Trump’s success in the polls so far, by contrast, is his dominance of the news cycle, which seems to help him stay in first place in the polls despite middling favorability ratings even within his own party. If party elites are looking to change the narrative, that’s a sign they might have some of their powers intact. Little of it will matter, however, if Rubio doesn’t live up to the hype in Iowa tonight.