Mike Murphy and Mark Mellman offered an interesting take on the early 2008 presidential campaign in yesterday's LA Times.

They gave some much-needed pushback to all this polling data that has been overtaking us. They wrote:

Although the political and media elites may think the campaign is in full swing, with the fortunes of each candidate rising and falling with every new poll, the truth is that voters -- the ones who are really going to decide this race -- don't start the campaign until much later.

Because voters are not required to make a decision until election day, they remain open at this stage in the race to new information, alternative perspectives and late-breaking developments -- all of which render today's poll results, to one degree or another, meaningless.

Consider this: More than two-thirds of the Democrats who voted in the 2004 Iowa caucuses didn't decide who to vote for until a month before the caucuses. Four in 10 decided in the last week. In 2004, 54% of New Hampshire Democrats decided within a week of the primary. It's no surprise, then, that in the 2004 election, John Kerry was lagging in third place until only a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Kerry then more than doubled his vote in Iowa and nearly quadrupled it in New Hampshire -- all in less than 20 days.

Iowa's Republican caucus-goers are no different. In 1996, nearly a quarter chose their candidate on caucus night or in the preceding two days; fully 42% decided in the last 10 days. And in New Hampshire, only 12% of Republicans decided in 2000 who they would support in the primary before Jan. 1 of election year.

Ahhh...music to my ears!

Unfortunately, this is a note that is not sustained so perfectly. To my chagrin, Murphy and Mellman join the ranks of those who have abused the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to make a rhetorical point. As anybody who has undergone the graduate school experience in the social science or humanities will attest, this is the bane of every introductory data analysis course. It is inevitable. Some newbie grad student - working from 90% enthusiasm and 10% learning - is all flushed with excitement after having read his first postmodern treatise on the power-relations inherent to "knowledge"
(probably Foucault's Discipline and Punish) and - not realizing how it nullifies his entire purpose for being in graduate school - trots out good old Werner Heisenberg to obliterate the whole project of studying. Whoops. I guess it's off to business school (although he never seems to go)!

Anyway, Murphy and Mellman write:

Meanwhile, the press ignores Heisenberg's principle -- that the measurements themselves, printed in bold type on Page 1, create their own distorted results, inaccurately advantaging some while disadvantaging others. By creating a potentially illusory sense of momentum or of failure, these pseudo-measures affect the extent of media coverage, fundraising, endorsements and the willingness of volunteers to engage.

I am not so sure that I agree with this. My intuition is that the polls are simply reflecting the elite dialogue in the nation. Average voters hear that Hillary or Rudy is "up" amidst the dribs-and-drabs of news analysis they acquire, and they toss their support to one of them when queried by a pollster. The source of the response is real - it is just not from the respondent. It is a "sampling" of the elite dialogue. So, I don't think that the poll results are "illusory." They are just something other than what they appear to be at first blush. They do not reflect the views of the electorate per se. Rather, they reflect the elite dialogue on the candidates.

I would agree with Murphy and Mellman if they argued that the elites systematically create a fictitious, actively-engaged, Jeffersonian public so that they can think that they are analyzing the average voter - rather than analyzing themselves. What is more, I'd like to see this process end. Minimally, it hampers the elite dialogue. It creates what is essentially an echo chamber effect. The polls are an echo of the elite conservation, but elites falsely take them as fresh voices joining the discussion. This makes elites less susceptible to alter their views when new, valid data presents itself.

Nevertheless, elite analysis is not idle. It has real value. Political elites of all stripes are trying to gauge these candidates to see who will be the most competitive in both the primary and the general elections. In so doing, they are narrowing the choices down for the voters. This is a needed and valuable civic service.

Thus, I think that Murphy and Mellman's basic hypothesis is close to accurate, but a little off. They argue:

Don't get us wrong -- an awful gaffe at this stage could be deadly, and there's no question that early money is crucial. But let's be honest. The absurdly early start of this primary season has a lot more to do with entertaining bored political elites than with persuading actual primary voters.

I don't think that the early contest is for the sake of entertaining the elites. Rather, I think it is a campaign designed specifically for their consumption because they serve an important function in this - and any - presidential election. They decide who is, and who is not, politically viable. They set the agenda. This is not to say that I think this uniquely early start date is an efficient way for elites to accomplish this civic task. They do not need so much time to make up their minds. However, I think it is appropriate and inevitable for the campaign season to begin at least a few months before the average voter starts to give a damn. Elites have a role to play - and their role comes before the average voter's role.

As I have indicated in prior posts, I think that this agenda-setting power of the elites is actually inevitable in a democratic system such as ours. Political elites have almost always set the agenda in our elections. Take elections to Congress. The party convention system for nominating candidates was replaced by the primaries in the hopes that it would "open up" the process and give the people a greater say in who would be a candidate for office. What happened? The parties turned from the conventions to candidate recruitment so that, once again, they still retain power over who does and who does not make a viable run for Congress. Why is it that some congressional elections are contested and others, while there is a nominal opponent, are uncontested? Much of it has to do with the actions of the Washington-based congressional committees, who set the agenda.

There is something similar going on right now with the presidential election system. The difference is the breadth of elite participation in the presidential election, which is at an all-time high. Elites of all stripes - journalists, pundits, Washington power brokers, donors, and even the well-informed who chime in via the blogosphere - are actively engaged in determining the agenda for the 2008 election, i.e. who shall and who shall not be a candidate worthy of the average voter's consideration.

I do think that Murphy and Mellman are accurately intuiting that political elites are engaged in what amounts to a fairly robust lie to themselves about exactly what they are doing. They consider themselves to be analyzing when in fact they are judging. But this process is not without value.

So why has this contest to woo the elites started so early? My guess is that the candidates themselves are to blame. Nobody wanted to be last to the campaign. It's similar to the strange social process I see every time I fly Southwest (which is ridiculously cheap to Pittsburgh from Chicago). Southwest does not have assigned seating. In advance of the boarding, everybody is seated in the lounge. Inevitably, when an attendant goes to the booth, everybody starts to form a queue - even though there is obviously 10 minutes to go until boarding starts. Why the queue? Somebody misread the actions of the flight attendant, and got in line. As none of us wants to be last in line (remember: no assigned seats!), we all start to queue up. Thus, we are left standing in line for 10 minutes with all of those comfy lounge seats going unoccupied. So inefficient, and yet so predictable! Similarly, my intuition with this campaign season is that most candidates felt that being last to start would be political suicide. So, when the first ones jumped into the race, the rest felt compelled to do likewise.

My feeling is that the campaign is just like the Southwest queue. It is not futile. The queue serves a necessary purpose because there are no assigned seats on the plane. However, its timing is inefficiently early. We could all have been seated for a bit longer.