Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Modern Earls of Warwick

Over the long weekend I read a book about the Wars of the Roses, the struggle in the latter half of the 15th century between the houses of York and Lancaster for the English throne, a struggle which eventually saw Henry Tudor, a distant Lancaster claimant, found the dynasty bearing his name.

Among the leading figures of the era was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who earned the sobriquet 'Warwick the Kingmaker' by first providing the military support needed to place Edward IV, son of the Duke of York on the throne in 1461 in place of the Lancastrian King Henry VI and later, when his influence with Edward waned, helping overthrow Edward in 1470 to briefly restore Henry to the kingship.

This last success proved short-lived, however, as Edward didn't take his exile in Burgundy lightly, returning to England the following year, where he gathered an army and defeated Warwick at Barnet, with the Earl among the dead. Edward consolidated his victory by defeating another Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury the following month, and secured his throne until his death in 1483.

If not for the machinations of his brother Richard and the entire affair of the Princes in the Tower, it would likely have been the House of York, not the House of Tudor, which dominated the next 125 years. All-in-all, one of the more interesting eras of English history.

Which leads us an interesting date of our own, tomorrow night in the state of Iowa, where the caucuses will officially kick off the presidential nomination season, which, while not officially over when Super Tuesday arrives on Feb. 5, will most likely be over in any practical sense. A year or more of posturing and politicking, millions of dollars of campaign expenditures, all get compressed into this next month-plus, and that month begins tomorrow.

Polling of both parties in the last month has shown very tight races, and no one really knows what to expect - historically, accurate polling of the caucuses has been hard to come by. However, the latest set of data from the Des Moines Register shows Huckabee has overtaken Romney on the Republican side, which McCain a distant third, while on the Democratic side Obama has opened a gap on both Clinton and Edwards.

Considering the difficulty of accurate polling and margins of error, it's still a three-way race on the Democratic side, and it won't be a shock should any of the three win. The race will likely be determined not by the supporters of those candidates themselves, but rather by supporters of the other candidates: Richardson, Biden, Dodd and Kucinich.

In the caucuses, voters will initially group up by what candidate they support. However, any candidate who does not reach at least 15% support of all the voters at that caucus meeting (of which there was 1,781 around the state) is declared "not viable". At this point, supporters of viable candidates get 30 minutes to lobby these new free agents and attempt to garner their support. Once this period ends, supporters of non-viable candidates now get a chance to switch their preference.

All of which makes the polling difficult - what matters is often not just who a voter's first preference is, but their second preference as well.

The Register poll shows three "viable" candidates, then Richardson tied with Uncommitted (6%), Biden (4%), Dodd (2%) and Kucinich (1%). Given the closeness of the tally among the "big three" it's entirely possible for some combination of these candidates (or even Richardson alone, depending on how uncommitted voters split) to tip the final result to any of Clinton/Edwards/Obama by encouraging their supporters as to whom to support as a second choice.

Kucinich has already expressed his preference in the matter, encouraging his backers to move to Obama if his candidacy doesn't meet the 15% standard. However, it's Richardson and Biden who are the big guns here, and either might be able to extract some meaningful commitment in exchange for encouraging their supporters on who to back as a "plan B".

It will be interesting to see if either one has designs on becoming the new Warwick.

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