So who died and put Iowa in charge of the primary process? Who knows, but it’s been amazing seeing tiny unrepresentative Iowa retain its first-in-the-nation status with its undemocratic caucuses while the rest of the states look on in envy.
Iowa’s power has no doubt been diminished in this new social media-driven world. In the past, the likes of Steve Bullock and John Delaney might’ve had a fighting chance thanks to Iowa’s white rural voters, but we, nationally, whittled the field effectively down to four real candidates—Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and, in a distant second tier, small-town liberal college-town Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Say what you want about Buttigieg and Andrew Yang, but you don’t need Iowa to bolster low-name-ID candidates, which is supposedly why the Iowa caucuses exist. We had a national primary in 2019, and it whittled down the field. And that’s great, but it still sucks that a state that has little resemblance to the Democratic Party base will now get to potentially whittle down the field some more.
Except, in a fortuitous change of rules, Iowa may have just eliminated its ability to do so! “In previous years, the Iowa Democratic Party reported just one number: the number of state delegates won by each candidate,” reported the Associated Press. “For the first time, the party will this year report two other numbers—who had the most votes at the beginning and at the end of the night.”
That means that three different people might be able to declare victory, denying the state the chance to play queen- or kingmaker. If everyone wins, does anyone lose?
As a primer, the Iowa caucuses are a lesson in … something, something that has no bearing with democracy. For starters, you have to show up on a work night, spend several hours haggling in public, unable to cast your vote in secret, while supporters of the various candidates cajole and harangue you to stand with them.
There is a first ballot “vote,” where you stand by your candidate’s group. If your candidate fails to get 15% of the total, then he or she is eliminated and you get to move to a new candidate for the next round, and so on, until only candidates that exceed 15% are left.
This spectacle is repeated at the precinct level all across the state. In the past, no popular vote was recorded, but the Bernie Sanders campaign argued that the system screwed them in 2016—that they had more supporters, but lost the delegate count because of the way the vote was spread out across the state’s multitude of precincts. In other words, he might’ve won some districts by a massive margin, lost others by a sliver, and yet he “lost” because what used to count was winning precincts, not winning the overall popular vote.
A rational democratic system would grant the highest vote-getter the victory. And so Iowa, bowing to that reality, will report that vote.
Except, remember, there are multiple rounds of votes. So the winner of the first round might not be the winner at the end of the night. That’s ranked-choice voting in action (something I do not support, but you can yell at me about that some other day).
So to summarize, there will be:
- Popular vote winner, first round
- Popular vote winner, final round
- Precinct winner (old system)
Maybe a candidate will win all three and the results will be clear. But there’s a very real chance, perhaps a probability, that several candidates will be able to declare victory.
And that’s the best possible scenario.
Iowa doesn’t deserve its first-in-the-nation status. An undemocratic process in a non-representative state should not be making decisions for the entire country.
So by making it hard for any single candidate to walk away with victory, it allows a larger chunk of the field to live to fight another day, onward to New Hampshire (also undeserving), South Carolina (worthy), Nevada (undemocratic caucuses), and the first for-reals Super Tuesday at the start of March, when about a third of delegates will be dished out.
In an ideal world, everyone can stick around until that first week of March, when 16 states (including California and Texas), territories, and Democrats abroad cast their ballots. Let a broad swath of states, representing every corner of the party base, narrow down the field.
It shouldn’t be Iowa. So thank you, Iowa, for rendering your results less meaningful than might otherwise be the case.