If history is any guide, next week we should see a spate of polls released marking the presidential candidates’ standing in Iowa, in New Hampshire and nationally. January 4 marks the “4-week out” period from D-Day in Iowa. That is, it is T minus 28 days from the caucuses in that state, set this election for February 1. During corresponding periods in 2008 and 2012, there were at least five national polls released in each of those elections.

This is the first in a series of articles that will examine the 2016 race for president. Since, by far, the most interesting and convoluted contest lies on the R side of the fence, the Republican nomination free-for-all will be my initial and probably primary focus for these writings. I’ll be viewing a lot of this through an historical lens and examining factors shaping the outcome and candidates—in other words, a lot of compare and contrast.

A number of things separate this election’s Republican battle from those in recent years—sheer size of the field is the most obvious; but the particular mood of the electorate, changes in the money game, momentum and poll standing will all also play significant roles in determining the eventual nominee. But any analysis must start by taking a good hard look at the timing aspect of this season’s nomination process, how it differs from previous years, and what effect that difference might have on the state of play in the race for the Republican nod.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know the schedule for the primaries was altered by the leaders of the RNC in order to supposedly move the process toward settling on a winner sooner, rather than later. This move was made because those running the party establishment believed that extended nomination contests in years past had crippled their nominee’s chances in the general election.

Of course, with the presence of Donald Trump in the field and his current commanding lead in the national polls, they may rue the day they made this decision. Also, they would probably do much more to help their chances in the general election if they gave more attention to the party’s agenda that is increasingly out of touch with the demographics of modern America than to structural matters like the timing of primary contests. But alas, it seems the Republicans are doomed to go to war with the army they have, rather than the army that could win. So, let’s take a look at the calendar as it stands for 2016 and extrapolate on its potential effects on the outcome of the nomination process.

The Republicans have chosen to make their competition more frontloaded and, at the same time, more backloaded. In both 2008 and 2012, show-time began on January 3 with the Iowa caucuses, followed within a week by New Hampshire (January 8 and 10, respectively). In 2008, there was also a considerable amount of unruliness from state party leaders, as several states, in defiance of the RNC, competed to play a larger role in the nomination by moving their primaries earlier. This resulted in an extremely frontloaded process with 29 state primaries/caucuses held within the 33 days following Iowa.

A start to the primary season this early in the year wreaks havoc with public opinion polling that is so crucial to campaigns in their final pushes to primary day, mainly because it’s important to show some momentum to energize supporters to come out on election day. Polls taken over holidays are notoriously suspect—many pollsters don’t even bother conducting them over the several days of Christmas and New Years’ week, fearing the results are just too inaccurate.  So, going into a January 3^rd Iowa caucus with polls of limited reliability, or no recent polling at all, if nothing else, certainly ups the uncertainty factor; and it can bring surprises that might push unheralded candidates suddenly into the media spotlight—like Rick Santorum in 2012.

This year the start of the season has wisely been moved back to February 1, when Iowans will brave the cold winds of a dark winter night to gather with their neighbors and begin to put some sort of shape on this currently rather amorphous competition. This means, compared to the two previous elections, any comparative analysis of where candidates stand in the polls, needs to be offset by 29 days.

More on this in a later post, but it’s relevant to note that on December 3, 2008 (one month out from the Iowa caucuses, about where we are now), the top five Republican candidates were all within 12 points of each other nationally (11% for McCain and 23% for Giuliani, with Huckabee, Romney and Thompson wedged in between). From December 4 to 8 in 2012 (30 to 26 days out from Iowa), polls showed Gingrich dominating nationally, putting up Trump like numbers in the mid-30s. However, to be fair, Newt’s poll dominance was much more short-lived than Trump’s has been.

The Republican primary calendar has also been frontloaded—at least compared 2012. While, as mentioned, 29 states had conducted their nominating contests within 33 days of the Iowa caucuses in 2008, in 2012 it took 91 days to reach that number on April 3. Fans of arithmetic will note that is a nominating season elongated by nearly two months over the previous one.

While I would maintain that this did not really ever effect the certainty of Romney’s nomination, it most definitely lengthened the time that Romney’s campaign team were forced to keep their eyes on the primary ball and continue to swing at it; and it could be argued this was not exactly helpful to their effort in the general election. But it’s hard to imagine that even with a more compressed primary schedule and an earlier clear winner, that any Republican would have beaten Obama in 2012.

Moreover, there were additional more important factors complicating the primary race then other than the calendar. A recalcitrant Newt Gingrich and a never-say-die Ron Paul simply refused to quit until long after their campaigns had obviously run out of steam and this served to fan the anti-Romney fires. Many of those supporters were never going to be enthusiastic about the eventual nominee—whether he was crowned in early February or in April. So Romney’s problem in creating momentum in the general election was much more about the ideological divide in the Republican party than it was about the calendar.

Still, to fully understand how a candidate’s momentum will play into the selection of the nominee it’s necessary to fully comprehend the timing of the various primaries and where Super Tuesday fits into that equation this election is also different than in years past. Super Tuesday has been moved forward this year and is sooner, with respect to Iowa than in either of the last two elections. It will take place a mere 29 days after Iowa, on March 1 .

In 2008, Super Tuesday was held on Day Iowa+33 and it was the death knell for Romney, who withdrew two days after it. This essentially sealed the nomination for McCain, though Huckabee lingered long after it was obvious he was in a losing battle.

Super Tuesday in 2012 was not held until March 6, or Day Iowa+63, and it had only about half as many states as four years previous. It was relatively un-super last time around. Romney had sown up the nomination for sure with his victories on February 28 in Arizona and Michigan (Day Iowa+56), and one could make a good argument earlier. Santorum did not officially surrender until April 10 (Day Iowa+98); Newt Gingrich not until May 3 (Day Iowa+121) and Ron Paul not until May 14 (Day Iowa+a ton).

So just because there’s a more compressed schedule this time around does not necessarily mean that at some point fairly early on the obvious winning campaign can just get on with things and ignore the primaries in front of them. If there are a few candidates who decide to stick around on the fumes of hope or simply as a matter of principle, the putative (don’t you just love it when people use that word?) nominee is going to have considerable difficulty moving on and focusing on November. What are the chances that this current crop of candidates includes at least a couple of plucky lads or lasses with the obstinacy of a Ron Paul or a Newt Gingrich?  I’d say, given these characters, pretty darn good. If that happens all the planning of the party masterminds will have been for naught.

In the next article I’ll examine just how super Super Tuesday is or isn’t this year and how and when the distribution of delegates might affect the outcome of the Republican contest. Here is a table of the Republican primary schedules for 2008, 2012 and 2016, staggered so Iowa is Day 0 in all three years. However, it only goes through Day Iowa+91, since all contests were decided by then.