The FiveThirtyEight Team Goes To Iowa

DES MOINES — If tonight’s Republican debate resembles the last one, then Marco Rubio will receive more incoming fire than any other candidate — despite not exactly being in the driver’s seat in the Republican race. Rubio’s position reminds me a bit of playing the board game Risk. (I’m sure my colleagues will chastise me for not citing a hipper board game.) Specifically, it reminds me of trying to control the continent of Europe when playing Risk. Europe is a sucker’s bet in Risk because it can be attacked from all the other large continents — Asia, North America and Africa — and yet, under the game’s rules, you don’t get all that much of a bonus from controlling it.

Rubio, indeed, seems to stand in the way of every other Republican’s quest for world domination:

• This is most obvious in the case of the other remaining “establishment lane” candidates: Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich. These candidates are tightly bunched in New Hampshire polls, while Rubio is probably the only one with a chance of a decent finish in Iowa.
• Knowing that a strong finish in Iowa might allow Rubio to break away from the pack in New Hampshire, these candidates (and their Super PACs) are doing whatever they can to undermine Rubio’s standing in Iowa, including running ads like these, even though they have no hope of a strong finish in Iowa themselves.
• Ted Cruz has somewhat transparently sought to turn the Republican nomination race into a two-way battle between himself and Donald Trump, presumably out of the (perhaps naive) notion that the party elites would have no choice but to back him if Trump were the only alternative. That strategy entails keeping Rubio off balance.
• Trump is constantly at war with pretty much everyone. Whether he picks his battles well is another question, but in the case of his attacks on Rubio he’s on firm tactical ground. Trump, who has relatively little support as voters’ second choice, tends to benefit from keeping the field divided. A weaker Rubio facilitates that division by keeping New Hampshire and the “establishment lane” open.

Some of this comes with the territory, so to speak. If, like Rubio, you’re trying to be the candidate with crossover appeal to every major Republican constituency, you’re also left open to attack from every flank. Historically, being the consensus-building candidate has nevertheless been a great position — most party nominees fit that description — but it’s been tough so far this cycle, as candidates like Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal have discovered.

So suppose you do get stuck trying to defend Europe (or Asia, which has some similar properties) in Risk. What’s the best strategy? In my experience, it requires a lot of patience. It’s tempting to start border skirmishes to prevent opponents from consolidating their own positions, but this is probably ill advised. Instead, keeping a lower profile makes you (slightly) less of a target. Your position also becomes a little easier to defend as the game goes along and other opponents are eliminated. Having to fight a three-front war isn’t quite as bad if all three fronts are contested against the same opponent. But sometimes you do need to attack — and when you do, you need to do it forcefully, dominating your opponents in one or two turns instead of leaving yourself overextended while the battle is half-finished. I’ve belabored this analogy enough. But what we’ll want to watch tonight, and in the upcoming weeks, is whether there’s a “show of force” from Rubio. Such a show could take the form of an advertising blitz like the one that’s underway in Iowa. It could be the rollout of a bunch of endorsements. It could be a pointed attack on other candidates — perhaps Trump? — when Rubio has mostly declined to attack before. It may be too soon for that– or maybe it’s already too late. Rubio will need to time all of this all correctly; he may only get one chance.

DES MOINES — The new Des Moines Register poll conducted by Ann Selzer is now out on the Democratic side, and like the results for the Republicans released yesterday, it really doesn’t change our perception of the race. In the poll, Hillary Clinton is slightly ahead of Bernie Sanders, 42 percent to 40 percent, while Martin O’Malley brings up the rear at 4 percent. The FiveThirtyEight’s polls-only forecast continues to suggest that Iowa leans Clinton’s way. She’s still at a 66 percent chance to win, as she was last night, while Sanders retains a 34 percent chance. Clinton continues to lead in the model not only because the Selzer poll has her ahead, but also because Selzer’s polls have had a fairly significant house effect. That is, they have tended to produce better results for Sanders and worse results for Clinton than the average poll. The model takes that into account — if a pro-bernie poll is showing Clinton ahead, the model thinks she must really be ahead. In the FiveThirtyEight polls-plus forecast, Clinton maintains a larger advantage. She’s at an 82 percent chance to win, while Sanders is at 18 percent. Clinton is in a better position in this forecast because of the many endorsements she’s earned. Moreover, Sanders didn’t really rise from the 39 percent he earned in the last Selzer poll, rather, Clinton dropped from 48 percent. Support from within her party’s infrastructure may help push newly undecided voters back into her column. For now, the race for Iowa remains close on the Democratic side with two well-liked candidates earning favorable ratings above 85 percent from Democratic caucus-goers. Don’t be surprised if a number of voters change their mind in the final weeks of the campaign.