[kevkrom]

Meh. It isn’t so much about WINNING Iowa as it is that you can demonstrate the ability to put together an effective ground game in a reasonably small state. A top-5 finish, especially anything with 10% or more, shows you’re someone to be reckoned with and helps with ground game and funding for later contests. A total bust in Iowa pretty much means you aren’t going anywhere - you can’t win the nomination there, but you can sure lose it.

New Hampshire is really the useless one - it’s basically a contest for the title of Chief Squish. South Carolina, on the other hand, generally crowns the main conservative contender.

[Gaffer]

So, in your opinion, all of what you say could ONLY be done for IOWA and such a small pandered-to electorate with nonstandard (compared to the rest of Red State America) straw poll histrionics? Meh from my POV.......

[Vigilanteman]

Indeed. New Hampshire is even more useless than Iowa as a bellweather. Independents can vote in either primary, so in a cycle like 2012 when ObaMao was running for re-election, guess which primary they packed.

Four decades or so ago, they were actually fairly reliable bellweathers. Not anymore.