Voters’ Summer Flings With Candidates Typically Don’t Last

Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders (left) and 
Donald Trump. AP/Getty

As self-described socialist Bernie Sanders and reality television star Donald Trump surge into second place in the Democratic and Republican presidential contests, some may wonder what’s happening to American politics.

The answer: It’s nothing new.

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For the past three decades, there has been a rhythm in presidential politics. Every four years, in the summer before Iowa and New Hampshire vote, some candidate comes out of nowhere, surges in the polls, gets buzz, and then eventually returns to nowhere.

Michele Bachmann

This is what UCLA professor Lynn Vavreck dubs the “discovery, scrutiny, decline” pattern. Party activists discover a shiny new candidate as an alternative to the race’s front-runner, usually when the campaign is just beginning. The insurgent faces press scrutiny and then, typically, declines.

“It is not unlike products that debut and get people to try them out,” said Vavreck. “But what news coverage giveth, news coverage taketh away.”

Four years ago, everyone was talking about former Minnesota US representative Michele Bachmann. From April to June 2011, Bachmann had picked up 8 percentage points in a University of New Hampshire poll. She was in second place behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. She would go on to perform so badly in the Iowa caucuses that she didn’t even make it to the New Hampshire primary.

Romney might not have been too worried about Bachmann because he had seen the pattern before. In 2007, he was the one having his moment in the summer sun. In June of that year, he led the field in New Hampshire with his highest poll numbers of the year. Behind Romney was former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, who many thought could very well be the eventual nominee; in fact, the eventual winner was John McCain. On the Democratic side, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson was the on the move, picking up 6 percentage points in three months and sliding into third place behind Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

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