As the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate field solidifies, the nation begins to focus on… Iowa?
Since 1972, Iowa has been the first state in the nation to weigh in on the selection of Presidential candidates for both the Democratic and Republican parties. While someone obviously needs to go first, Iowa is a remarkably lousy choice.
Rather than holding a primary election, several states use presidential preference caucuses. Iowa is unfortunately one of them. While the state’s caucus rules and processes for 2020 are still being tweaked, here’s the basic timeline and structure:
Starting even before the 2018 mid-term elections, potential 2020 Democratic candidates for President flocked to Iowa. At first, the candidates mostly visited party leaders and influencers, with the candidates paying their respects, requesting campaign assistance, and seeking endorsements from the Iowa Powers-That-Be. Consider the opening scene of The Godfather and you’re got the idea.
Now, the 2020 candidates are beginning to court Iowa voters – voters who have grown so self-important that they demand early and continuous personal attention from everyone. The potential nominees, trailed by teams of eager reporters, will proceed to canvas the state where they will suck up to very small groups of Iowa voters in barns, cafes, drug stores, VFW halls, bowling alleys, and any other quaint venue they can find. They will extol the virtues of old-school, hand-shaking, baby-kissing political campaigns as they trek from living rooms to town square gazebos. They will take the obligatory photo from at least one of the Pizza Ranch locations across the state. They will most definitely attend the Iowa State Fair this August where they will be impressed by the butter cow, judge the tallest corn stalk, and try to correctly eat something on a stick that doesn’t belong on a stick.
During the 2016 primary season, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders combined for a total of 50 separate trips to Iowa and spent a total of 96 days in the state. The platoon of 2020 Democratic candidates will put those numbers to shame. The intense retail politics that Iowans expect will consume an inordinate amount of resources and time from all of the campaigns. That’s just the way it is.
To finally make their choices, Iowans will gather in one of the 1,681 precinct locations to which they’ve been assigned at 7:00 PM on February 3, 2020. There, they will listen to speeches, wander around, argue among themselves, and vote twice – with the first vote eliminating candidates that don’t meet a predefined percentage threshold. Each individual precinct will have been tasked with selecting a given number of party convention delegates based on its population and each will eventually determine their delegate(s) based on the percentage of caucus votes that each candidate receives.
And that’s the short version.
Iowans claims that the above combination of retail politics and caucus voting structure represents true democracy in action.
No. It does not.
The caucus system itself favors voters that have the schedule flexibility, physical stamina, and personal inclination to spend hours in a loud, crowded room on one specific date and time, endure boring speeches and pushy neighbors, and eventually cast votes. If someone was designing a system to discourage participation in an election, this might be it.
The Iowa instance of this system is mostly a huge national gift to Iowa. While the Iowa hotel, restaurant, and rental car industries certainly thrive from all of the candidate visits and media attention, Iowa is not exactly a microcosm of America.
41% of Iowans live in rural areas as opposed to 19% nationwide. Ethanol subsides suddenly become a critical policy position for the candidates when there might be just one or two other issues of greater national importance. Iowa is also 91% Caucasian. While there are a few states with an even whiter population and Obama did win Iowa twice, the fact remains that the U.S. population is only 76% Caucasian.
We are already seeing Iowa polls for 2020. A recent one puts Biden and Sanders even at 27% each with everyone else polling under 10%. Interesting? Not really. Biden hasn’t even announced yet and the Iowa caucuses are still 11 months away.
But isn’t Iowa a swing state, you ask? Yes, it is. And Iowa’s eight Electoral votes could come in handy for Democrats. There’s just one small problem. Ignoring all incumbent Presidents seeking a second term (since that’s a different game), there have been nine competitive Democratic presidential preference caucuses in Iowa since 1972. Five of the Iowa winners went on to win the Democratic nomination, including all of the last four. While that’s a decent track record of predicting the Democratic nominee, exactly one of the Iowa winners in the past half-century has gone on to win the general election (Barack Obama). On the other hand, two of the Iowa losers went on to win the general election (Jimmy Carter & Bill Clinton). The Iowa caucuses could thus be deemed counter-predictive of a Presidential victory. Dandy.
Is the Iowa process charming? Sure. With Iowans acting as proxies for the rest of America, the candidates’ performances in intimate settings are useful data points as the electorate gets to know the players.
Is the Iowa process a good means of kick-starting the selection of a winning candidate? No. The Iowa caucuses and the preceding circus are expensive, non-representative, counter-predictive anachronisms. We’re unfortunately stuck with them for 2020. But perhaps this time we can take the Iowa results with a grain of salt… or at least with a kernel of corn.