What if Iowa Settles Nothing for Democrats?

DES MOINES — Iowa is packed with presidential candidates and hundreds of campaign aides advisers and contributors. Twenty-five hundred representatives of news organizations have been granted credentials to cover the caucuses on Thursday night twice as many as in 2004.

Rarely has a political event been so intensely anticipated as a decisive moment at least on the Democratic side.

But what if it is not decisive?

A number of polls going into the final days have suggested that after all of this the Democratic caucus on Thursday night could end up more or less a tie.

In truth amid all the endless permutations of outcomes that are being discussed — can Mrs. Clinton the putative front-runner survive a third-place finish or Mr. Edwards a second-place one? — aides are beginning to grapple with the frustrating possibility that all the time money and political skill invested here might prove to be for naught when it comes to identifying the candidate to beat in the primaries and winnowing the top tier.

“It would be like a six-month trial and a hung jury” said David Axelrod a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “I think it is really possible.”

Rather than clarify the state of play and consolidate this crowded field a bit an outcome like that would almost certainly muddle things further and potentially extend the time before Democrats know their nominee.

For different reasons Iowa is not likely to determine much for the Republicans either. Only Mitt Romney the former governor of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee the former governor of Arkansas are going all-out here and whatever happens between them the Republican race already seems likely to go on at least until the cavalcade of primaries across the country on Feb. 5.

But for the leading Democrats an inconclusive ending here would be a much more complicated result.

Because none of them would be judged a decisive loser Mrs. Clinton Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama would all be able to go on to the New Hampshire primary next week no questions asked.

And you can bet on this: the other Democrats in the race — Senators Christopher J. Dodd and Joseph R. Biden Jr. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico — would feel less of the morning-after-Iowa pressure to pull out.

It would be hard for any candidate to play the “I beat expectations” game and claim some sort of chimerical victory much the way Bill Clinton proclaimed himself the winner after coming in second in New Hampshire in 1992 — although Mr. Edwards who for much of the year campaigned in the shadow of his two rivals would no doubt try.

“Frankly if there’s a three-way tie that changes the dynamics of what has been reported the entire year: that it’s a two-person race” said Jennifer O’Malley Dillon the Iowa campaign director for Mr. Edwards who has put in more than a year preparing for this week.

“It changes the way people look at the race and they’ll see it as a three-way race.”
It is a good bet in fact that one candidate would try to claim a victory even if it was by a single percentage point or less.

Still that is not likely to get him or her on the cover of Time or Newsweek (that would be the old-school way of measuring the political impact of winning in Iowa). The other two would be left fighting for the right of second place.

And politics being politics it is likely there would be a campaign trying to present a three-way tie as a victory.

Beyond that New Hampshire which for Democrats has seemed something like a stepchild in this year’s nominating process given all the attention being paid to Iowa would get a chance to have some real influence over the nomination.

For 25 years there has been debate and study about how the outcome in Iowa affects New Hampshire voters. This time around because of the decision by the New Hampshire secretary of state Bill Gardner to set the primary on Jan. 8 voters will have just five days to examine the candidates and make their decision.

One of the bedrock political assumptions of the year — and certainly one that has informed Mrs. Clinton’s campaign — is that winning Iowa and New Hampshire would set the table for sweeping the 20 or so states that vote on Feb. 5 the day when many Democrats believe that their contest will effectively be decided. But if Iowans end up being equally divided among what many party leaders view as an unusually strong cast of candidates who is to say that voters in the Feb. 5 states won’t be as well?

None of this is meant to suggest that such an outcome would mean that what has taken place here over the past year is insignificant. Quite the contrary.

Watching these candidates Democrats and Republicans deliver their final speeches take the last rounds of questions from Iowans and shake the hands of supporters one more time it is apparent that most of them are much better at campaigning than they were a year ago.

Mr. Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe an old Iowa caucus hand who has moved here to help out in the final days said as much in explaining why he would be comfortable with even an inconclusive outcome.

“The experience here in Iowa” he said “has been tremendous for the entire campaign.”