There was plenty of buzz after popular Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced she was supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the race to be the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee.

The Iowa caucuses are an early test for the Republican field, and, said The New York Times, “DeSantis is in need of a jolt. He has staked his campaign on winning the Jan. 15 caucuses, moving much of his staff to the state in a bid to stop Mr. Trump’s momentum. But his poll numbers there have slipped.”

The Des Moines Register called the endorsement “an enormous win for DeSantis, who hopes to harness Reynolds’ star power among Iowa Republicans as he looks to jumpstart his stagnant campaign and establish himself as a clear alternative to front-runner Donald Trump in the race’s critical final months.”

But much of the talk about the potential impact of the Reynolds endorsement is exaggerated. It isn’t likely to have much of an impact on the caucuses.

Just look at what happened in the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses.

Though Howard Dean’s presidential prospects started as a long shot, by the late fall of 2003 the former Vermont governor was showing great strength in the polls and had become the prohibitive front-runner to win the Iowa caucuses.

His strength in the contest helped him to add a shovelful of high-profile endorsements to his list of supporters.

In November 2003, just two months before the Jan. 19, 2004, caucuses, Dean won the support of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The unions’ endorsements of Dean, wrote The Washington Post, “were the latest indication of Dean’s status as the front-runner for the nomination. The unions, the AFL-CIO’s two largest, have a combined membership of 3 million and represent more than 30,000 workers in Iowa, where the nomination process begins with Jan. 19 caucuses, and more than 10,000 in New Hampshire, site of the first presidential primary Jan. 27.”

On Dec. 9, former Vice President (and unsuccessful 2000 Democratic presidential nominee) Al Gore endorsed Dean for the nomination.

Not long after that, former New Jersey Sen. (and New York Knicks great) Bill Bradley jumped on the Dean bandwagon.

One month later, on Jan. 10, Dean was endorsed by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin. The Associated Press observed that Harkin’s endorsement “will give Dean the backing of the state’s most durable Democratic politician, a four-term senator whose organization can prove a vital asset on caucus night Jan. 19.”

A few days later, another Democrat campaigning in Iowa, Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Dean.

There were other endorsements, including the kind of celebrity endorsements that receive lots of attention but have little impact on the outcome. But you get the drift. 

Dean had a long list of powerful endorsements, and he rolled them out in a way that both created momentum and reflected the supposed inevitability of his nomination.

But when the caucuses actually rolled around, Dean finished a weak third, well behind Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

So much for the long list of endorsements, whether they were individuals, interest groups or celebrities.

Want more proof? If so, consider the case of Republican John Engler, the powerful governor of Michigan, who supposedly would play a vital role in the 2000 GOP race for president.

Engler endorsed George W. Bush for president and promised that Michigan would be a “firewall” that guaranteed the Texas governor would win the state’s primary and go on to win the nomination.

Bush won the nomination and the White House, but he lost Michigan’s Republican primary by 8 points to Arizona Sen. John McCain. Engler didn’t deliver on his firewall promise, no matter how popular he was with Republican voters. 

Of course, endorsements can be valuable in certain kinds of elections.

In low-profile contests where voters don’t know much about the candidates, endorsements can be crucial. This is particularly the case in nonpartisan elections, where voters don’t have many “cues” about who is what.

But in presidential contests — particularly recent ones, when voters are buried by television ads and daily news coverage of the candidates and the parties — most voters learn a great deal about the nominees and can make their own decisions.

That goes doubly so for Iowa, where voters have come to believe that they have a special responsibility to examine the candidates and kick off the process of nominating the next president.

Gov. Reynolds’ endorsement isn’t likely to hurt DeSantis, but it isn’t likely to help him much either. The voters of Iowa likely don’t think they need to rely on someone else’s judgment in picking the winners of the Iowa caucuses.