Picking the Perfect Candidate Is an Imperfect Science

(Bloomberg View) -- Scott Lemieux has a nice item out on why parties can't count on picking the "correct" candidate in terms of electoral prospects. There's really no way to know whether, say, Martin O'Malley or Bernie Sanders would have won in 2016. I'm fairly confident that another Republican nominee would have done better than Donald Trump did ... but maybe not. It's easy to see the weaknesses of the actual candidates but very difficult to assess how the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives would have played out. Generally, too, individual candidates just don't matter as much in presidential elections as most people believe they do -- although in very close elections, any small effect can matter.

Nevertheless, parties can make some educated guesses. All things being equal, moderates tend to do better than ideological extremists in general elections. Even in these days of partisan polarization, it's usually better to compete for weak partisans than to rely on rallying the party's strongest supporters; strong supporters tend to be easily rallied by almost any candidate the party puts up.

Again, all things being equal, experienced candidates tend to do better than neophytes -- in particular, U.S. House candidates who have previously been elected to office tend to do better than those who haven't. Scandal-plagued candidates tend to underperform, so (for example) vetting candidates who turn out to have a history of sexual assault before they get nominated is probably a smart idea, and parties should design their nomination systems in order to allow for meaningful vetting.

What's less useful is speculative polling. In national campaigns, where public polling information is available, I'm extremely skeptical of hypothetical general-election horse-race numbers that compare candidates from one party to contenders from the other. Most voters know little or nothing about most presidential candidates, and one of the chief functions of campaigns is to fill in knowledge gaps, both positive and negative. Most of the time, candidates (other than incumbents) wind up performing as generic Democrats and Republicans anyway; those who don't just aren't all that predictable from early polling.

In presidential nominations, the months-long process of primaries and caucuses is now partially an attempt to do that vetting, or at least to take advantage of the vetting that the news media performs. That vetting has been pretty spotty. Democrat John Edwards had a major scandal that wasn't uncovered until he dropped out anyway in 2008; had he done just a bit better in the Iowa caucuses that year, he might have wound up the nominee before being exposed. And then there's Trump. Still, it's probably somewhat useful.

In other nominations, insiders get the job of sharing what they know about the candidates through their party networks. The same process happens in presidential nominations, too: in the "invisible" primary, before the voters caucus and vote. That's not undemocratic, because party nominations are properly the business of party actors, although they are free to invite voters to make the final decision, as most states in the U.S. do. But it's not only unrealistic to expect party actors to be neutral about nominations, but it would also be damaging to parties if they were prevented from weighing in on their own nominations, and without political parties, mass democracy is impossible.

But most of this, as Lemieux argues, is pretty much beside the point. It makes plenty of sense for party actors to fight hard over nominations because of the policy effects of winning control of the party. But which candidate is more likely to win? It probably doesn't make much difference, and when it does, it's usually difficult or impossible to predict.

1. Josh Putnam has the latest on the Democrats' reform commission. 

2. Andrew Lewis at the Monkey Cage on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case and minority rights. 

3. Kevin Mulshine on sexual harassment on Capitol Hill. 

4. My Bloomberg View colleague Megan McArdle on budget politics and the deficit. 

5. And Matt Yglesias makes the case for more budget deficits. 

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Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

To contact the author of this story: Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brooke Sample at bsample1@bloomberg.net.

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