Rick Santorum in Iowa

[JMT]

According to RCP average in Iowa, Santorum is at 0.5% in Iowa. This is very low considering he won the Iowa caucus, and 10 other states, just 4 years ago. Does anyone think that Santorum could surprise us all and perform better in Iowa than what is expected, maybe in the top 5 slots? I don't think he'll win, but I think he may surprise us when Iowa results come in. If you think he'll perform as low as the polls suggest, why do you think that is? This would be a massive drop of support in just 4 years time, conventional wisdom would say that he would at least do better than 0.5%.

[JMT]

In 2016, conventional wisdom seems to have gone out the window

The field in 2012 was very weak, and dissatisfied voters coalesced around him as the "not Romney." This time, the field is much stronger, so he's having a hard time breaking away. Also, only a handful of candidates hold a huge amount of the support both in Iowa and nationally (Trump+Cruz+Rubio+Carson=79.1% in the Iowa RCP average) and this makes it hard to break away from the pack. There are several candidates (Huckabee, Cruz, Paul to an extent) splitting his base of evangelical voters and born-again Christians that make up over 50% of caucusgoers. Finally, at this time in 2012 Santorum had 18% support in Iowa and still only squeaked out a victory; now he has 0.5%. A Santorum surprise, whether a win or just placing in the top five, is unlikely.

You make a very good point. I don't expect Santorum to do well in Iowa, but perhaps a little better than 0.5%. He's still largely irrelevant this time around, though.  And you're definitely right about conventional wisdom going out the window... not many things about the 2016 election have been "normal" thus far!!