Iowa Surprises Us All
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016February 2, 2016
Last evening, February 1, the people of Iowa cast the first votes for presidential nominees for the 2016 election. By the end of the night, two candidates were in a heated tie for first place, two candidates suspended their campaign, and one candidate pulled off a surprise win against a favorite.
On the Democratic side, former U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (New York) was declared the winner over U.S Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont). The outcome, however, was a squeaker. With 99.9 percent of the votes in, Clinton won a delegate percentage of 49.82, against Sanders, with 49.61. In actuality, the race was so close that Clinton won by a coin toss. According to the Iowa Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton’s final delegate count was 699.57 and Sanders’ was 695.49. Hilary Clinton was awarded 22 delegates and Bernie Sanders 21 for the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
On the Republican side, real estate mogul Donald Trump was ahead in the polls going into the Iowa caucuses. On the final poll before the vote, 28 percent of likely voters backed Trump, 23 percent backed U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (Texas), and 15 percent liked U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (Florida). Political experts, however, had earlier stated that a win for Trump would be likelier with high voter turnout because his supporters were less politically involved than those of the other candidates. Last night, however, despite record-high turnout at the Republican caucuses, Ted Cruz was the winner with a delegate percentage of 27.65. Trump was next with 24.31 and Rubio followed with 23.1 percent. (These percentages will be used to apportion the state delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in July. In actual delegates, Cruz won eight and Trump and Rubio won seven each. Physician Ben Carson won three, and Rand Paul and Jeb Bush gained one each.)
Two candidates suspended their campaigns after disappointing results. On the Democratic side, former Maryland governor Martin O’ Malley dropped out of the race. For the Republicans, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee threw in the towel.
Iowa’s caucus system is an unusual one. Voters gather on the night of the caucus in such places as school classrooms and church basements. For Democrats, voters stand in different areas of a room to indicate what candidate they are supporting. Republicans caucus by ballot. A candidate must gain at least 15 percent of the total vote to be viable, which can lead to people at caucuses asking neighbors to join their side in order to keep their candidate viable, or to people with failing candidates moving within the room to support a new candidate. People may also decide to offer a speech on behalf of the candidate whom they support. Whereas casting a vote in a primary election usually takes only a few minutes, caucusing takes hours, and only committed voters tend to participate.
The Iowa caucus has very little predictive value for who will actually win the presidential nomination. Iowa is just not that much like the rest of the United States. Iowa is a small, rural state in a nation in which most voters live in urban areas of large states. Also, the people of Iowa are far more likely to be white and are, on average, much older than are people in the rest of the nation. This is also true of the next state in the 2016 primary process, New Hampshire, which holds its primary on February 9.
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