Presidential Candidates: The Invisible Primary

The invisible primary refers to the period of time between when presidential candidates begin to show interest in running for president, and the period when the public first has an opportunity to demonstrate their support for the candidates through voting. During this period, candidate begin to collect support, endorsements and money from party elites, activists, donors and interest groups. Christenson and Smidt (2012, 598) emphasize the fact that recent scholarship has used a candidate’s level of funding and national political support at the start of the primaries and caucuses as indicators of the successfulness of candidates in the invisible primary. They go on to include party endorsements as an indicator of candidate success, as it is a …show more content…
Mcgowen and Palazzolo (2014, 436-437) define momentum as a, “…a function of success in the previous primary … multiplied by whether the candidate met, exceeded, or fell short of the expectations in the previous primary...” Essentially momentum means doing better than expected, and this method of quantifying momentum allows us to discuss this abstract idea with a continuous number, that also takes into consideration the relative impact of exceeding expectations at different levels of popular votes (Mcgowen and Palazzolo 2014, 437). Under the momentum model, instead of the pre-primary season being the key period to decide who will eventually win the nomination, early primaries and caucuses are what matters most. This means that Iowa and New Hampshire should have the greatest effect on candidates moving …show more content…
Mayer (2003) presents his model for forecasting presidential candidates, which is based on the invisible primary. Mayer argues that despite people who had claimed that the nomination process favoured outsiders, in the cases that Mayer looked at, the candidate who led the invisible primary ultimately won. In seven of the last time races these winning candidate led in polls at least a year before Myer goes on to notes that, as a result of his findings, the momentum serves more narrative purpose than predictive power. Candidates might move up and down in the polls, and momentum can explain this, but if the candidate who led at the start still normally wins momentum cannot explain the results of the primary (Mayer 2003, 155).
Christenson and Smidt (2012) go further, and suggest including Iowa and New Hampshire into the invisible primary. Their analysis finds evidence for Iowa and New Hampshire polls having a consistent effect on national media and national polls. This effect is more consistent than the effects of national media and national polling on polling in Iowa and New Hampshire. Campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire is therefore part of the invisible primaries because it heavily influences national perceptions of the candidates and can contribute to increasing funding of the candidates (Christenson and Smidt 2012,