Political Science and Presidential Nominations
Two concerns prompt this study. The first, plainer and more specific, is to use post-1976 hindsight to appraise selected generalizations that political scientists made about presidential nominations before the nominations of 1976. The second concern flows largely from the extent to which the generalizations are found to hold for the nominations of 1976 and for those that might be thought to follow. Does the appraisal lead to a favorable view of the "science" of a discipline that seeks to describe and explain politics in the present tense, now and for at least a near future? Or does it suggest that we should limit ourselves to the reconstruction of what happened, and why it happened, in the historical past7 The second question arises in less than ideal conditions for scientific endeavor. Students of politics can make a stronger argument for the science of their work when they deal with quantitatively more tractable subject matter. Generalizations about presidential nominations are based on small numbers-only two major party choices every four years-a mere twenty nominations in four decades of "contemporary" politics. Even that span may be too long given recent substantial changes in the rules for delegate selection and for campaign finance. Moreover, most of the generalizations about presidential nominations that command attention, here and elsewhere, are probabilistic, predictive statements that are often untestable in any rigorous sense. Rather than stating only the relations between variables, they also try to forecast what will happen as a result of such relations. It should be plain that I do not intend to belabor my political science colleagues for any mistaken expectations about the 1976 nominations. I had