Brendan Nyhan

Myths about primaries

John Sides is doing yeoman’s work at The Monkey Cage debunking myths about the Iowa caucus and the primary process. Here are two of the most interesting posts:

1. New Hampshire doesn’t have a better track record than Iowa of predicting the eventual nominee.

2. Democratic and Republican primary voters are not substantially different than Democratic and Republican general election voters according to a Forum article by Alan Abramowitz (PDF).

He also highlights a series of misconceptions from a Forum article by Peverill Squire (PDF).

Update 1/4 10:11 PM: To clarify, claim #2 is that primary voters are not substantially ideologically different from general election voters — as Rob correctly notes in a comment, the Iowa and NH electorates are absurdly unrepresentative of the nation’s demographic composition.