What We Have Learned from the Results in Iowa and New Hampshire

It used to be said that there were no second acts in American presidential politics. If a major party presidential candidate lost in a general election, he would never win in the future, even if he became party’s presidential nominee again. The one great exception to that rule was Richard Nixon in 1968. Nixon had been the GOP presidential nominee in 1960 and narrowly lost. Two years later he ran for governor of California and once again narrowly lost. By that point he had acquired the image of a loser in the view of political professionals, reporters, and other pundits, and so when he decided to run for president again in 1967-68, his first challenge was to dispel that impression. Nixon managed to do so by winning a big victory in New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary after his main opponent dropped out shortly before it was held on March 12, 1968. From that point forward, Nixon was his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. Donald Trump’s victories in Iowa and New Hampshire this year have seemingly done the same for him, by driving all but one of his remaining rivals from the race, and by dispelling the view that he could not win a two-person primary contest. (He never had less than two rivals in 2016 and so won many primaries that year with pluralities rather than majorities.) Still to be seen, however, is whether Trump can duplicate Nixon’s truly historic victory in the general election.