It’s a cliche at this point to say a primary election will all come down to turnout. But in Monday’s Iowa caucus, turnout is expected to play a big role not just in terms of who wins but in how early in the evening the major news outlets will be able to project the winners. Those staying up to see who won the first electoral contest of the cycle could be in for a long night if 2012 — when Mitt Romney’s tight victory was declared in the early morning hours (only to be reversed days later) — repeats itself.
A big turnout could have an opposite effect on the two parties. For Democrats, it means a closer race to watch between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. For Republicans, a big turnout signals Donald Trump is primed to pull away from the rest of the field.
“If Sanders’ folks don’t turn out, it’s clear Clinton wins,” said Timothy Hagle, a political scientist professor of University of Iowa. “If Trump’s folks don’t turn out, it’s not clear who wins.”
Not only are the Iowa caucuses run differently than most other states’ primaries, even how the two parties run their caucuses in each of the state’s 1,681 precincts are markedly different. Both parties ask their voters to show up at their precinct site at 7 pm CST (the polls aren’t open all day like they are in primary elections), but for Republicans, from there, it is simply a secret ballot, with delegates award proportionally for the state.
If turnout is big, then the Donald Trump hype is likely real, and Monday’s results may well resemble the six months’ worth of polling that showed the mogul dominating his competition. If the thousands of fans who came to Trump’s rallies don’t show up by at their precincts — if they’re discouraged by long registration lines, or by a winter storm expected to hit the state Monday evening or if they were never committed Trump voters in the first place — then the race opens up to the GOP candidates that have been nipping at his ankles. Does Ted Cruz’s reportedly strong ground game push him over the top? Or does a candidate like Marco Rubio get the surge that the establishment has been praying for? That uncertainty would likely delay any projection of a winner until later in the evening or into early Tuesday morning.
For Democrats, the caucus process is more complicated. Once the voters show up at their precinct sites, instead of casting ballots, they physically stand with the supporters of each particular candidate. If a candidate’s supporter group does not meet 15 percent of the total number of voters at the caucus site, then the group breaks up and those supporters must go with their second choice. Assuming O’Malley supporters aren’t able to reach the 15 percent to become “viable,” the stage is set for negotiating with Sanders’ and Clinton’s supporters who will try to woo them to their side.
If Sanders’ supporters turn out, the race will likely be closer between Clinton and Sanders, and that negotiation process plays a bigger role in terms of determining the state’s overall winner.
“The idea is that if Clinton is well ahead in any individual precinct, the process Democrats use may go faster because it won’t be a matter of who wins that precinct,” Hagle said. The negotiations will still be important, because every delegate Sanders can gain from bringing over O’Malley supporters can go to his total count, but the question is whether enough precincts will have the sort of negotiations that will delay making a statewide call.
“There will likely be many precincts where the negotiations go longer,” Hagle said. “If a lot of large precincts come in quickly for Clinton, then the others where the race is closer won’t matter as much in terms of the overall winner.”
The more precincts where the contest between Clinton and Sanders is close, the more likely it is that we will waiting later in the night to see Iowa’s Democratic winner.
We can but hope there is as much confusion on the Republican side as there was in 2012 when Romney was declared the winner then Santorum after a couple of weeks then Ron Paul gobbled most of the Iowa delegates later.
The Democratic caucus system in Iowa is truly bizarre, convoluted and opaque. As I understand it, the actual popular vote numbers are never even reported, just the initial delegate numbers…which aren’t final either, as further delegates are then selected at the district and state level, according to a process that even the most sophisticated press reports don’t try to explain.
their pre-determined narratives do not require them to…
they will spin the results to advantage Trump and HRC (regardless of actual numbers) because that is the general election coverage the MSM wants to provide.
Several months of ratings gold, followed by 4 years of drama (for either outcome) is too much to pass up.
My understanding of Iowa is the delegates are going right to the state convention. I’ve participated in walking su caucuses and I admit hating them and seeking a replacement, but they do have the virtues of ensuring proportional representation, and of letting anyone seek to be a delegate. When I voted in primaries it felt like dropping my ballot into black hole. In a caucus, you look into the face of the people seeking election as delegates, or you run and make your case. Though in my state, precincts are small and you’re meeting neighbors. My impression is such Iowa precincts are too big for that.
The precinct delegates go to a county meeting, where they perform the same ritual. The survivors then go to district meetings, and then finally the state convention in June.
Unsurprisingly, with such a Byzantine process the final results bear little relation to the initial ballot. In 2012 on the GOP side, Rick Santorum narrowly won the first round, but ended up with 0 delegates at the end. Most went to Ron Paul, who knew how to pack a meeting.