ABSTRACT
In 2004, a large field of Democrats battled through the preprimary period until a winner emerged, several weeks after the New Hampshire primary. In 2000, George W. Bush waited to see which Republican candidate would emerge from a crowded field to be his principal rival and then crushed him. The 2000 Democratic contest shaped up early as a battle between two Democratic heavyweights. The Democratic contests of 1976, 1988, 1992, and 2004 were examples of the "Seven Dwarfs" scenario. Because they span the entire era after the reforms of the early seventies, these contests demonstrate how the process has evolved so that the length of the nomination race has shortened. The early front-runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination was Gary Hart, a former senator from Colorado. In 1984, Hart had used an unexpectedly strong second-place finish in Iowa to catapult himself to victory in New Hampshire.
