The Insanity of the Iowa Caucuses
If you watch enough election coverage on television or read enough dispatches from reporters on the campaign trail, you tend to internalize certain "truths." For instance, every political junkie knows that the winner of the Iowa caucuses is likely enjoy a significant bounce in the polls headed into New Hampshire. As a result, most of us believe that if Hillary Clinton can manage to win Iowa, she'll also win New Hampshire and the nomination fight will effectively be over. I suspect that both Obama and Edwards would also have the inside track to the nomination if they were to win Iowa.
But it's worth taking a step back and considering how totally insane that is. All the polls in Iowa right now are showing a virtual dead heat. Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are all consistently polling at around 25-30%. From our experience over the last few decades, we know that polling--particularly when you take the average of several simultaneous polls--generally provides a pretty accurate picture of actual voting preferences. In other words, if Iowa had a primary (like most other states), we could be pretty confident that the final tally would resemble the poll numbers we're seeing now. Any one of the top three candidates could win, but it would likely be a very narrow victory, with the other two candidates just a few percentage points back.
In a rational universe, that kind of outcome--particularly in a small, unrepresentative state like Iowa--would be virtually meaningless. We'd call Iowa a draw and everyone would move on to the next state, their prospects unchanged. After all, why should we just hand the nomination to a candidate who only bested his rivals by 1 or 2 percentage points in one state?
One of the problems, of course, is that the actual results that we get on election night have very little to do with the initial "vote" tally. Through the bizarre caucus process, small differences in initial support become greatly amplified. Those whose candidates are not "viable" (i.e. do not have the support of at least 15% of the room) are lobbied aggressively by representatives of the other campaigns and eventually "vote" for someone else. And what's reported at the end of the night isn't even the final vote total from the caucuses, it's the delegate count.
Therefore, even if Clinton, Edwards, and Obama each have the initial support of exactly 25% of the caucus attendees statewide, the final delegate tally reported to the media is likely to show one of them "winning" by a significant margin, and that candidate will emerge with all of the momentum.
And, truth be told, it's not just the arcane caucus system that's the problem. Say, for instance, that the final delegate count shows Candidate A with 31%, Candidate B with 30%, and Candidate C with 29%. The press coverage will still be all about Candidate A's "victory," even though beating your opponent by such a narrow margin in the delegate count says almost nothing about your relative level of support among Iowa voters (only a small fraction of whom attend the caucuses anyway).
I know you've heard this all before, but it bears repeating as we approach the caucuses. It's understandable that if one candidate crushes his/her rivals in an early contest, that victory would provide momentum heading into subsequent contests. But there is no earthly reason why a candidate who eeks out a narrow victory in the Iowa caucuses (unless it is completely unexpected) should receive any "bounce" at all.
The fact that they do is largely attributable to the way the media covers the events, the way journalists set expectations and then determine who has surpassed them.
We know already that after a year of campaigning, the level of support for the three major Democratic candidates among Iowans is roughly the same. That will be true regardless of the final delegate count there. I wish journalists would keep that in mind when covering the results Thursday night, but I know that they won't.
As a result, the Democratic nominee will again be chosen through a bizarre game of red-rover played by roughly 5% of the population of Iowa.
We are truly a beacon of democracy for the world.
But it's worth taking a step back and considering how totally insane that is. All the polls in Iowa right now are showing a virtual dead heat. Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are all consistently polling at around 25-30%. From our experience over the last few decades, we know that polling--particularly when you take the average of several simultaneous polls--generally provides a pretty accurate picture of actual voting preferences. In other words, if Iowa had a primary (like most other states), we could be pretty confident that the final tally would resemble the poll numbers we're seeing now. Any one of the top three candidates could win, but it would likely be a very narrow victory, with the other two candidates just a few percentage points back.
In a rational universe, that kind of outcome--particularly in a small, unrepresentative state like Iowa--would be virtually meaningless. We'd call Iowa a draw and everyone would move on to the next state, their prospects unchanged. After all, why should we just hand the nomination to a candidate who only bested his rivals by 1 or 2 percentage points in one state?
One of the problems, of course, is that the actual results that we get on election night have very little to do with the initial "vote" tally. Through the bizarre caucus process, small differences in initial support become greatly amplified. Those whose candidates are not "viable" (i.e. do not have the support of at least 15% of the room) are lobbied aggressively by representatives of the other campaigns and eventually "vote" for someone else. And what's reported at the end of the night isn't even the final vote total from the caucuses, it's the delegate count.
Therefore, even if Clinton, Edwards, and Obama each have the initial support of exactly 25% of the caucus attendees statewide, the final delegate tally reported to the media is likely to show one of them "winning" by a significant margin, and that candidate will emerge with all of the momentum.
And, truth be told, it's not just the arcane caucus system that's the problem. Say, for instance, that the final delegate count shows Candidate A with 31%, Candidate B with 30%, and Candidate C with 29%. The press coverage will still be all about Candidate A's "victory," even though beating your opponent by such a narrow margin in the delegate count says almost nothing about your relative level of support among Iowa voters (only a small fraction of whom attend the caucuses anyway).
I know you've heard this all before, but it bears repeating as we approach the caucuses. It's understandable that if one candidate crushes his/her rivals in an early contest, that victory would provide momentum heading into subsequent contests. But there is no earthly reason why a candidate who eeks out a narrow victory in the Iowa caucuses (unless it is completely unexpected) should receive any "bounce" at all.
The fact that they do is largely attributable to the way the media covers the events, the way journalists set expectations and then determine who has surpassed them.
We know already that after a year of campaigning, the level of support for the three major Democratic candidates among Iowans is roughly the same. That will be true regardless of the final delegate count there. I wish journalists would keep that in mind when covering the results Thursday night, but I know that they won't.
As a result, the Democratic nominee will again be chosen through a bizarre game of red-rover played by roughly 5% of the population of Iowa.
We are truly a beacon of democracy for the world.
posted by A.L. at 10:53 PM
17 Comments:
AL
Among the things that you are missing in this post is the fact that the polls (in which you put such faith as measurements of a candidate's "true" support) are based on attempting to identify who is likely to participate in the caucuses. In other words, you put more stock in predictions about the outcome of an "insane" process than in the actual outcome.
More importantly, you seem to be operating based on a model of democracy in which the ideal is for everyone to participate, regardless of their level of interest, information or understanding of the candidates or the issues. The Iowa caucuses, on the other hand, give disproportionate influence to the most committed and most informed voters, and they require those voters (at least on the Democratic side) to engage in some level of dialogue/debate with their neighbors before making a final decision. They also provide the opportunity for the supporters of less popular candidates to vote for their second choice, thus making the ultimate winner of each caucus more of a consensus choice than would otherwise be the case.
Perhaps it is obvious to you that the results of the caucuses are in some sense less valid than the results of a primary. Maybe you are right, but you should face one significant internal contradiction in your analysis. The voters in a primary (particularly a large primary where the vast majority of voters have never met the candidates) are those most likely to be influenced by the media spin and horserace analysis that you (somewhat fairly) decry.
What MLS says.
It's entirely ridiculous that Iowa and New Hampshire get to pick our president for us. I don't really care how well informed they are, there's nothing in the Constitution that allows them this power.
Primaries should be held on the same day, in every state, just like the general election. The top two or three should have a run-off. It's simple and it is fair.
While we're at it (fantasizing), let's abolish the horrid "electoral college." My vote in Texas should count just as much as anyone else's vote. Right now, it counts for nothing, zero, zip, nada, because I vote democratic. I've heard people try to defend the electoral college, and have never heard a single compelling argument for keeping it.
MLS,
I'm not opposed in principle to having a system where your second choice actually matters. I think that's a useful metric in a primary race. But what happens in Iowa is that the candidates with the best organizers end up dominating the process or you get weird strategizing (like in 2004 when Kucinich's organizers instructed their people to support Edwards because Kucinich felt snubbed by Dean).
I also think you shouldn't have to spend 5 hours at a caucus to register your preference. There are a lot of people who care enough to vote, but just can't afford to devote an entire evening to this caucus nonsense.
I'm also not opposed in principle the idea of having one contest at a time in order to make the election less about commercials and media coverage and more about retail politicking (though people vastly overestimate the extent to which this is true in IA and NH). But the first contests shouldn't always be Iowa and New Hampshire, which aren't even very representative states. If we're going to have this kind of system, it should at least rotate every 4 years.
As insane as the Iowa system is, what is more astounding is the fact that voters in all other states let it influence the way they vote. The "I want to vote for the winner" philosophy is alive and well. It is really entertaining to read attempts by Iowans to rationalize this ridiculous process. Just because I never get to shake the hand of a candidate does not mean I don't have a pretty fair idea of what he or she stands for. If anything, the stilted way candidates have to campaign in both Iowa and New Hampshire does much to muddy the waters. There are very few local Iowa issues that are that high of priorities for us in urban California. Ethanol and farm subsidies are only of concern in how much are they going to cost us. The effects of globabl warming on San Francisco bay probably doesn't rank high with the farmers of Ames either.
Of course there is nothing in the constitution that gives them that power, THERE IS NOTHING IN THE CONSTITUTION ABOUT HOW CANDIDATES ARE CHOSEN.
Its a Party issue, its not a constitutional issue. I am constantly amazed at the number of people who cant differentiate between the two.
As a former Iowan I am amazed at the audacity of people at other states who probably lack the education to pick Iowa out on a map of the US claiming that their lack of knowledge of that process invalidates the process.
You may be amazed at my audacity but have the citizens of Iowa asked any candidate their position on the distribution of water between the salmon run in the Kalamath River and farmers in the San Joaquin valley? Have they questioned them on their stance on funds for flood control on the Sacramento and Sacramento rivers? I am sorry but both of these issues directly affect more people than the entire state of Iowa and we want to hear their answers before the nomination is sewn up. Is that too much to ask?
There are a bunch of problems with the electoral process, beginning with the fact that there is no procedure for deciding who gets the delegates if a state's popular vote is disputed.
This should have been resolved since the issue was the highlight of the election in 2004.
...and 2000.
...and 1876.
You're not wrong about Iowa. I totally agree with you. But I think you're actually falling into the same trap everyone else is: overestimating Iowa's (and New Hampshire's) importance.
Overhauling the U.S. electoral system is going to require taking a good long look at all of its many problems and coming up with a collection of solutions to make it work better.
Iowa could move its caucuses to June and it wouldn't change the way the nomination processes work. Part of the problem is that news organizations want to declare a winner before most of the voting is done and that isn't going to change. Without Iowa, pundits would be proclaiming Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee based on her national support, simply because they want to. In fact, if Iowa weren't keeping Edwards in the race, they would be a lot closer to being right.
Also, the same pundits wanted to proclaim Giuliani the nominee months ago, and it was Huckabee's rise in Iowa that stopped them. What I'm getting at, Iowa being the traditional "first in the nation" is a problem, as is the format the caucuses take, but the framing of the nomination procedure by the news media as a sports event is a much bigger one.
I would suggest that the best thing to do to start with would be to condense the entire election season. Allow the parties to have their conventions between Labour Day and the first week in October, and force all of the states to move their primaries back to no earlier than June 1.
After that I would work on some sort of rotation system, where states would alternate who got to lead off.
If nothing else, it would put the races into the back pages of the papers for a few more months and keep the current administration in the front page where it belongs.
While what you said may well be accurate, the reality is the party has to pick a candidate - by 1 vote or 20%. No method is perfect... including the smoky backroom. The caucus method is arcane, but does allow for real participatory involvement of those who attend. And it has been forever true that those who show up make the decisions.
And it is good to remember, that for Dems this election offers a surfeit of riches. Anyone of the top tier and second tier candidates are worthy contenders. The current pre-vote parsing is good political exercise, but the question is will it produce a viable and likely winning candidate. In this cycle I think the answer is yes, because the Dem choices are unusually good and the Repub choices fairly tepid (at best).
I am less concerned that Iowa has a disproportionate effect on the process that I am that the "real" issues get discussed. And by real I mean the issues that affect the lives of everyday people. This seems to be the case in this cycle.
Don't be shocked that there are politics going on in here...
Democrats in my state employ the caucus system, albeit strategically timed so as to not matter at all where the final outcome is concerned.
IMO, caucusing is every bit as goofy as you say. Last year, a motion was entertained to replace the caucus with a primary. It was voted down by a wide margin — why, I will never understand. I filed it under, "There's no good reason for it; it's just our policy."
I believe we are all held hostage to the current mode of caucus selection that impels 300 million to abide by their goofy and unrepresentative voting/caucus proceedures.
Caucus voting should occur on same date in ea state and have one vote. The 15% minimum requirement is an unnecessary step that also tempts sore loosers to cede their votes. If you don't get the first vote you should be out.
I also feel the Electoral college is not efficient or representative and needs to be abolished.
We should caucus on one day nationally with all primaries taking place on that day, just as in general election.
Electoral college should not overide a majority in the popular vote.
We need to federally mandate all stated to adopt the same election practices and methods, as electronic voting without paper trails are ridiculous, and we should insure electronic voting that is safe, or abolish it altogether.
We have not corrected our inept and antiquated system of selecting candidates, or a reliable and authentic manner in which votes can be counted.
As an Iowan, I agree with everything splitting image said. Iowa's not really the problem. I even think si has one of the best solutions I've seen.
Because of what happened with the last election, everyone has been vastly over-valuing Iowa's importance in choosing the ultimate candidate. Before 2004 the criticism of Iowa was that that we almost never picked the 'right' candidates. Probably all that's 'usually' true is the old maxim that there are only three tickets out of Iowa.
The main unfairness is just that we get so much attention. Fair enough to spread it around, but please no national or regional primary. I truely think that we did the party a favor in winnowing out Howard Dean. Only in person could you tell that he had an odd and awkward persona that just wasn't going to hold up on the national stage...although that 'scream speech' went well.--the coverage of which by the way is what truely sunk his chances, not his finish in Iowa.
Anyway, my point being that there is a real value in retail politics, where interested people have a chance to meet multiple candidates in person. Gotta go. Chris Dodd just finished with my ironing and I've got to get him started on the mess in the kitchen that Hillary left after fixing supper.
Here's my problem with the caucus system: What if everyone in Iowa wanted to participate? I know, that's crazy, but let's just say they did.
Not possible.
What if you're on dialysis? How many 17-year-old babysitters are there to go around? Who will man the 911 system, the emergency room, the quickie mart. What if you're the low man on the totem pole--you can't get the night off, so no vote. What if you're in Iraq?
I cannot believe it's still done this way. But thanks to the commenter who reminded me that it's not the Constitution, it's the parties.
Anon Lib,
You deserve a beer or three. While the rest of the blogosphere dallied, you analyzed correctly both Obama's and Huckabee's chances earlier than any other pundit that I read.
Congratz
Oh come on, AL--no one claims that the Iowa Caucuses, in and of themselves, are a "beacon of democracy to the world." The beacon is in the entire tapestry of the very flexible democratic process as a whole. I for one think it is a wonder to behold, for all its quirks and eccentricities. I think the Founders were very wise to leave electoral matters so widely diffused within the "laboratory of the states." The whole thing has held together for a long, long time as democracies' life expectancies go.
Clinton is now complaining that she lost in Iowa because people were "disenfranchised." Which would make me leap to Iowa's defense even if I thought it were as terrible a system as AL does.
Voters will choose the candidates who support ideals consistent with their own. MLS, you say that Iowans are more informed about the elections. Despite this, Iowans are still biased according to their demographic. Do you think that people from Texas and New York are going to have the same distribution of public opinion? The Iowan demographic is going to support environmentalism in general. Do you think that this representation is a valid representation for the entire United States of America? You have already stated that Iowa and New Hampshire basically choose presidential candidates for the elections; this is why they shouldn't.
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