It's Thursday morning and I've had about 48 hours to decompress following an all-nighter on Monday. I am now in Durham, North Carolina, where the spring-like air and tranquil atmosphere is making Iowa feel like a distant memory. While the final results from the caucus continue to trickle in, the picture is clear, and I am excited to share takeaways from my time in Iowa.
The Results
The results in Iowa were a mixed bag. On the one hand, third place is disappointing. On the other hand, Warren outperformed her polling averages — recent polls in Iowa leading up to the caucus showed her at 13–17%. In the end, she earned 18% of the state delegates and 20% of the final vote count. And more significantly, Biden's poor performance is exactly what Warren, and the other top-tier candidates, were hoping for. While Biden and Bernie continue to lead most national polls, there is reason for optimism for Warren.
Biden will continue to underperform his polling numbers because his campaign hasn't invested in a ground game, and his supporters are not as energized as those of the other top-tier candidates. Excitement translates into voter turnout. It's one thing to say who you'll vote for over the phone, or when filling out an online survey — the primary mechanisms polling data rely on. It's another thing to actually go vote.
Bernie's support is fixed. He has 25% of the Democratic party in his corner (in some states it's a little higher, and in others it's lower). And they will turn out. But his support is also unlikely to grow, particularly before Super Tuesday. It's highly likely he will have a plurality of delegates heading into the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee this summer, but it's also highly unlikely that he will have a majority (over 50%), particularly with Bloomberg getting into the mix. And with Biden seemingly returning to the pack, the top four are more cluttered than ever before, which means a contested convention with two, or perhaps more likely three, candidates vying for the party's ticket remains a distinct possibility.
The Caucus
It occurred to me early Tuesday morning, amid the national media backlash over the reporting delay and dysfunction in Iowa, that my first caucus may very well be the last in the country (aside from Nevada's later this month).
I was assigned to help out a Warren "Precinct Team" (Warren supporters who volunteer to staff the Warren table at a caucus location) at one of the 1,679 precincts across Iowa. A precinct is a district or town as defined for political purposes, and the caucus locations included school cafeterias, gymnasiums, churches, and other community gathering spots in a given precinct. My precinct was one of eight in Urbandale, a quintessential Iowa suburb a few miles north of Des Moines. 290 residents crammed into the local elementary school cafeteria, a square room that was ill-suited to hold, by my estimate, more than 100 people.
Along the walls of the cafeteria, local officials set up tables for each candidate that they expected could be viable — Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren and Klobuchar. Given the lack of space, the other candidates — Yang, Gabbard, Steyer, Bloomberg, Patrick, Bennet — were given small "islands" in the middle of the room.
The first step in the process is known as the first alignment. At exactly 7pm, people are given 15 minutes to stand with the candidate they support. The congestion in the room created confusion because supporters of one candidate would overflow into another candidate's space, prompting the local officials to ask each candidate's supporters to try to form single-file lines to ensure an accurate count. After the 15 minutes had passed, the officials counted off each candidate's raw voter count. Pete had roughly 70 votes, and Bernie, Biden and Warren all had roughly 50. Klobuchar and Yang had the next highest voter counts, at about 40 and 25, respectively.
The second step is known as the second alignment. In order for a candidate to remain viable for the second alignment, they needed to receive at least 15% of the total vote in the first alignment. With 290 voters in this particular precinct, that meant the magic number to stay viable was 44. That left only Buttigieg, Biden, Sanders and Warren viable for the second alignment.
In between the first and second alignment, a representative for each of the viable candidates is given 90 seconds to address the room, with the objective being to persuade supporters of non-viable candidates to switch over to their candidate. The Warren precinct captain had told me earlier in the night that he may not be comfortable making a speech, so I had a little bit of time to prepare my thoughts, and deliver my pitch.
For the record, Warren added 11 new voters in the second alignment, which was more than Bernie but less than Buttigieg. But I won't take credit for all 11.
After the second alignment, votes are totaled again. Then there is what's referred to as "caucus math", where the local officials and precinct captains for each candidate come together to convert the raw number of votes for each candidate into a delegate count.
In the end, my precinct mirrored the state-wide results: Pete and Bernie earned the largest share of delegates, while Warren and Biden followed in third and fourth, respectively.
I'm glad I got to experience a caucus for myself. With that said, I'm in agreement with the media narrative: The caucus, irrespective of unforeseen technical challenges with the reporting app, is an antiquated process for choosing a presidential candidate. It creates three distinct metrics to report on (first alignment votes, second alignment votes, and share of state delegates), which leaves the results open to interpretation and spin. Moreover, there is no good reason for Iowa — a state that is 90% white and holds 1% of the total delegate count — to carry the weight that it does in the democratic primary process.
Voter Apathy
Another personal takeaway for me is that lack of engagement in the democratic process is a real problem. This gets some attention, but I'd argue not enough. In the buildup to the caucus, I heard many political pundits, from Tom Brokaw to David Axelrod, assert that Iowans take their first-in-the-nation status very seriously. Without question, at this stage of the democratic primary, there is more buzz about politics in Iowa than in other states — an inevitability given the television and radio advertisements, yard signs, town halls and rallies that saturate the state for nearly a year.
But the large majority of Iowans do not pay attention, and do not feel personally invested in the process. This is reflected in data: 15% of Iowan residents actually caucused in 2016, and exit polls show turnout was lower this year. And it's also consistent with my experience on the ground. Most of the voter outreach I did in the two months leading up to the caucus — which consisted primarily of phone calls and knocking on doors — was targeting registered democrats. And even within this population of "likely caucus-goers", the majority of people I spoke with did not plan to caucus, were undecided, or were uninformed about the candidates.
This isn't a problem unique to Iowa; even in national presidential elections, which get the highest voter turnout, only half the country votes. There is no one answer to address this issue. And I definitely wouldn't suggest it falls on any one candidate, or even the DNC, to invest their resources into educating and mobilizing new voters. The constraints of a campaign cycle — namely time and money — make targeted outreach to likely voters a more effective strategy. But I do think our government should explore this issue, and take steps to increase voter engagement. Solutions that have been proposed range from making Election Day a national holiday and reversing the sabotage on voting rights, to adding civics studies to the k-12 curriculum in our public schools.
Politics is Personal
Maybe I'm stating the obvious here. But my experience talking to Iowans every day reinforced the extent to which political affiliations are deeply personal for many people. This is particularly true in a primary. In a general election, it's a more straightforward choice and, in most cases, you vote for your party's nominee. But in a primary, particularly one with such a big field and with sharp distinctions between the candidates, who someone supports reveals much more about their stance on policy issues, their worldview, and the type of personality they prefer in a candidate. Early on, I noticed that voters who identified as "undecided" were more willing to talk and learn about Warren. Voters who were already committed or leaning towards one candidate were less interested in learning new information, and were quicker to end a conversation. They also tended to be more defensive when I presented policy arguments or information that potentially undermined their candidate's position.
I am not exempt from this tendency to hold firm to my allegiance to a candidate. I still contend that Warren is the candidate best equipped to bridge the divide between the progressive flank of the party and the party establishment. I also believe she has the strongest message: Corporate oligarchy erodes competitive capitalism, and we need to root out the influence of corporate money in Washington in order to get the government to work for the public good. And I also like her the best.
But I think it's worthwhile — at least it was for me, personally — to empathize with others, and try to understand why voters support the candidate they do. When I did this, I found that my conversations with people who supported a different candidate were more amicable and even productive.
I understand why Sanders supporters are so passionate — for 40 years, he has been going against the grain in American politics, and has played a major role in elevating the issue of wealth concentration and inequality in the national spotlight. Buttigieg is the candidate most reminiscent of Kennedy, Clinton and Obama — a fresh-faced, effective communicator new to national politics who would make history by becoming the first [fill in the blank] candidate. And Biden and Klobuchar have strong records of their own, and present a comfortable alternative to the uncertainty of a Warren or Sanders presidency.
I will support whoever the nominee is, because the most important task for America in 2020 is to end the Donald Trump era. Will Sanders and Yang supporters do the same?
The National Emerson College Poll of 1,128 registered voters between January 21 and January 23