Who is ahead in the iowa caucus

On Monday night, February 3, 2020, Iowans will flock to school auditoriums, union halls, community centers and even a few private homes in 1,681 precincts across the state of Iowa to give us the first glimpse of how real voters feel about the race for the Democratic nomination for president.[1] Because they are unique in the modern American electoral system, a bit of confusion over how to interpret the results is understandable. For those seeking to understand the opening gambit of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, the following is a short guide to the results and how to interpret them.

Understanding the results

Somewhere around 11:00 EST on February 3rd, the Iowa Democratic Party will announce three important numbers:

• The “first expression of presidential preference”
• The “final expression of presidential preference”
• The “state delegate equivalency”

The “first expression of preference” will be a count of the first vote Iowans take when they come into the precinct meeting. The precinct chairperson will count these cards and announce the results. The “first expression of preference” will most closely resemble what most Americans are used to—a simple tally of who the voters like the best.

Then the Iowans whose presidential candidate does not get 15% of the vote will be allowed to vote for their second choice—and here’s where the real fun begins. Voters for candidates who met the 15% threshold will have a minimum of 15 minutes to try and convince their neighbors that they should come and join their group. Persuasion techniques vary from earnest policy discussions to cookies and popcorn. (As far as I know cold, hard cash has never been used. Iowans tend to be a law-abiding bunch.) When that portion of the evening concludes, the precinct chair and secretary will calculate the second number to be released, the “final expression of preference.” This will incorporate the second choices of many Iowans—a feature that is not part of most American elections unless they’ve adopted a system known as “ranked-choice voting.”

The final decision of the evening will be to calculate how many delegates each presidential candidate will get to send to the county convention using a formula laid out in the Iowa Delegate Selection Plan. These people will attend the county conventions to be held later in March. The Iowa Democratic Party will aggregate these votes by congressional district and this vote will estimate the number of national convention delegates each presidential candidate will have when the Democratic Convention opens in July, referred to as the “state delegate equivalency.”

While all this is going on there will be—for the first time ever—over 80 “satellite” locations where Iowans who are not able to get to their caucus precinct can go and vote. The majority of these are in Iowa, many in nursing homes to accommodate those who are too frail to go to a precinct. Another eight are in Florida and Arizona, no doubt to accommodate the “snow birds”—Iowans who wish to escape the harsh winters. Another 13 states plus the District of Columbia are also hosting caucuses, along with some overseas locations, from France to Tbilisi (in the Republic of Georgia) to Scotland. Attendees must be Iowa residents, registered to vote in Iowa, 18 years old and pre-registered as of January 17. So far more than 1,700 people have signed up to participate at a satellite caucus location.

Interpreting the results

As if figuring out what those three numbers mean isn’t hard enough, the following morning’s interpretation will, no doubt, further confuse people looking to get some clarity out of Iowa. One of the many peculiar features of the modern nomination system is that, in the early states especially, the “winners” are not always those who actually win the most votes. For instance, in the 1984 Iowa caucuses, former Vice President Walter Mondale, a strong front-running candidate, won an impressive victory with 49% of the vote. But as the front runner and a native of neighboring Minnesota, Mondale was expected to do well. Far behind him, with only 16.5% of the vote, was Colorado Senator Gary Hart. The story out of Iowa? All about Gary Hart. His shoestring campaign went on to win him a victory in the New Hampshire primary and he gave Mondale a tough race all the way to the end (although in the end, Mondale won the nomination).

The expectations in Iowa will be the result of polling. Ever since September, it looks like the race has settled into one between the top four candidates and everyone else.[2] Senator Warren and Mayor Buttigieg have had their moments on top but as the race comes to an end it looks like a close contest between former Vice President Biden and Senator Sanders. The final Des Moines Register poll will come out on Saturday evening and cement expectations.

But polling in a caucus state is extremely difficult for many reasons—not the least of which is the fact that the time commitment to vote is so much longer and more onerous than stopping by your polling place on the way to pick up the kids from basketball practice. Many outcomes could upset the expectations. For instance, what if Senator Amy Klobuchar, who runs best among those who are not in the top tier, makes a surprisingly strong showing and gets herself into the top tier? Or what if Senator Elizabeth Warren recovers from her months-long slump (she was leading the field in late October) and finishes in first or second place? An early January poll in the Des Moines Register reported that 60% of Iowa caucus-goers are undecided.

Conventional wisdom over the years has held that there are three tickets out of Iowa. That may not be true this year if the four candidates all finish within a few percentage points of each other. The value of the win is the attention it will give to the “winners” as they move into New Hampshire, whose voters are next.

On Monday night and early Tuesday morning of next week the most important number will probably be the first expression of presidential preference. That’s the easiest one to report and to understand. But by midday Tuesday and into Wednesday a consensus will likely form around the winner of the expectations game. And that person may or may not be the person who actually won the first vote.

[1]The same thing will happen in the Republican Party but in the absence of a real challenge to President Trump there probably won’t be much interest in the Republican caucuses.

[2] The top four have been Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Iowa’s decades of success holding the first spot in the Democrats’ presidential nomination process makes it best qualified to stay an early state, Iowa Democrats told the national party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee Thursday.

“We intend to remain first,” said Scott Brennan, former state party chair and current rules committee member.

But Iowa’s 2020 Democratic caucus was not a success. It’s one of the big reasons why Iowa had to give a presentation to the Democratic National Committee. In April, the committee stripped Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina of their early nominating positions and allowed states to compete for the coveted spots.

Iowa, alongside 15 other states and Puerto Rico, gave presentations and answered questions from the DNC’s rules committee this week. They are applying for one of five waivers which would allow states to hold their presidential nominating contests before the first Tuesday in March.  The committee will evaluate each state on three metrics: diversity, competitiveness, and feasibility.

Iowa starts with a disadvantage in all three areas. The state is 85% white, its politics are increasingly red, and the state party received a black mark with its conduct of the 2020 caucuses.

In their presentation, Iowa Democrats emphasized the increasing racial diversity of the state, its largest cities and its elected officials. Iowa is already home to economic and population diversity, speakers argued.

Iowa’s relatively low-cost media market allows lesser-known candidates to compete, Brennan pointed out, and the candidates who spend the most don’t always win.

Iowa still claims its status as a swing state, even though the GOP holds the trifecta in the Statehouse and all but one of the state’s congressional seats. Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst argued Democrats can recover, pointing to competitive races in three of the state’s four congressional districts.

“What I hear a lot is that maybe Iowa Democrats are in the desert, and I say, well if that’s true, I can still see the water,” Konfrst said. “Because it’s right there, 2018 is when we picked up six seats in the Iowa House, it’s not that far away.”

But Iowa must go beyond proving its value as a competitive space for Democrats. The speakers also had to show how the party plans to move past the problems marring the 2020 caucuses. In 2020, errors in the mobile application used to report voting totals caused a three-day delay in reporting results.

The state party will contract with an approved vendor or with the Iowa Secretary of State and county auditors in 2024, according to the plan outlined to the DNC. Changes to the state’s vote reporting process do not negate the rest of the infrastructure Iowa has to offer as a campaigning state, Brennan said.

“Fifty years of competitive Iowa caucuses created one of the nation’s most well-organized networks of county party committees and activists who welcome candidates to all parts of Iowa, and understand the challenging logistics of presidential campaigning,” he said.

The fact that Iowa holds a caucus instead of a primary is also a point of contention. Democrats nationally have long criticized caucuses as being less inclusive, the in-person process prohibitive to lower-income, disabled and elderly voters.

Other states, including Nevada, have moved to primaries in recent years because of these criticisms. Iowa cannot make this switch: State law requires parties to hold caucuses for the presidential nomination process.

“Caucus states are going to be a hard sell for me,” committee member Mo Elleithee said in April.

Iowa will still hold a caucus in 2024, but the Democrats proposed significant changes to the process. No longer will Iowans gather in community spaces, separating into different corners of a room to align and realign to support candidates of their choice.

Instead, Iowa voters would request a presidential preference card by mail. Voters would have two weeks to 28 days to return the card by mail or in person on caucus night. The card would only mark down the voter’s first choice candidate, eliminating the realignment process. In-person precinct caucus meetings would focus on party organization and not include presidential preference votes.

Committee members questioned whether this new caucus process is distinct enough from primaries to stay first in the nation.

New Hampshire has a state law requiring its secretary of state to set its presidential primary date before other “similar” primary contests. Iowa has held its contest ahead of New Hampshire since the 1970s, because caucuses have not been viewed as “similar” to a primary. New Hampshire made its pitch to the committee Wednesday.

It’s unclear how the Granite State will go forward if the committee denies its application for an early state waiver. “At the end of the day, the state law isn’t something that the people of New Hampshire would allow to be changed,” New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Raymond Buckley said Wednesday.

Also unclear is whether the changes to Iowa’s caucus process would make it count as a similar enough contest under New Hampshire’s law to spark a dispute over which state goes first, if both states regain their early voting spots.

Under Iowa law, precinct caucuses must be held at least eight days earlier than any other state’s contest. Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn said Iowa Democrats are happy to talk with other early states about their place in the lineup.

“We’ve not had negotiations with New Hampshire, but if you want to establish the order here today, we can go right back there in a room back there,” Wilburn joked, drawing laughs from committee members.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee will deliberate and announce which states get the five waivers Aug. 5 and 6. Konfrst said regardless of the DNC decision, it’s important to keep in mind that Iowa Republicans will hold the first-in-the-nation caucus in 2024.

“We did make a good case for why Iowa deserves to continue to be the first test for presidential candidates. … And one of the reasons is Republicans will be going first,” Konfrst said in a news conference after the meeting. “So in order to help Democrats continue to grow, and for our party to continue to stay strong in the state, Democrats being first is critical to that point.”