The Republican primaries have been very exciting lately. Herman Cain, a relatively unknown candidate, won the Florida straw poll last week following a debate the night before. Ron Paul, R-Texas, continues to poll well and collect lots of money from individual donors. Texas Governor Rick Perry, in a matter of weeks, has become a frontrunner (if not the frontrunner), outpolling the significantly more established Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts.
Yet, despite that the Republican primaries have been very exciting, they are not very important. When it comes to primaries, poll results generally are not the most important factor.
But why not? Candidates who win straw polls usually do well in elections, too. It also seems counterintuitive—if the Republican Party wants to nominate people that are reasonably popular, wouldn't they do best to ask people directly, say, by having them vote? It seems almost unfathomable that voters would not have the final say.
There are, however, some questions regarding this process. How do primary voters eventually settle on a single candidate? Why is this candidate almost always acceptable to the mainstream?
The answer lies in the unseen. Before the primaries, party insiders hold a metaphorical ""conversation"" about which candidate is most likely to win the general election. Insiders have to consider two things: on the one hand, they have their own preferred candidates; on the other hand, they want the group to choose a single, hopefully best candidate. Given their preferred candidate, these insiders signal their support, mainly through endorsements, in order to influence the preferences of other insiders. At the same time, by observing which candidates seem to be attracting the most endorsements, they can guess which candidate would be most acceptable to the broadest number of actual voters, and align themselves accordingly. This process, the ""invisible primary,"" is the subject matter of an important book in political science, ""The Party Decides.""
But shouldn't the party insiders try to pick the candidates based on the input of voters? In reality, no—most voters don't come up with their own political positions. Instead, they follow ""opinion leaders,"" or influential individuals who have opinions that people trust enough to use as their own.
It's easy to see why this happens. A high knowledge of the political process is something that most people don't have time for. Yet most people do care about politics. So, people look for leaders they can trust and ""outsource"" their opinions to them. This allows less knowledgeable voters to participate in the political process through their respective ""opinion leaders."" In fact, given the ability of opinion leaders to steer public will towards policies that are relatively reasonable, this arrangement might be the best possible option.
We know that voters follow opinion leaders. For example, the public usually rallies behind the president during times of war, except when the opposing party does not. This difference can be seen when comparing the Iraq War consensus to the fight over the Libyan intervention. Lately, however, Republican primary voters are not supporting the preferences of Republican party insiders. Should this disprove the theory that primary voters will blindly follow opinion leaders? Again, the answer is no—voters that are relatively uninformed and uninterested, but very willing to follow the advice of others, are very easy to persuade. Republican voters will rally behind the Republican candidate, no matter who wins.
Let's look at the polls again. According to the Ames Straw Poll, Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota is the best candidate. However, in a poll of party activists (known as ""power outsiders"") by Pollster, Bachmann is hardly worth mentioning. A majority of those polled think she can't win the election and would not make a good president. Rick Perry has had double-digit leads over Mitt Romney in recent polls. However, the power outsiders have something else to say: 57 percent have a worse opinion of him now than they did before the commencement of primary debates. A poll of political insiders done by the National Journal in late August agrees with this result: only 31 percent of those polled believed he had a better chance of beating Obama in 2012 than Romney. As for the other candidates? They have almost no presence amongst the party insiders.
These are the polls that matter, and they tell us that Mitt Romney will get the nomination. In fact, at this point, there's hardly a contest.
Zach Thomae is a freshman majoring in computer science. Do you disagree that the results of straw polls are irrelevant? Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
