Are We In For Another 2012-Style Late -Night Iowa Call?

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, speaks during a campaign event at Music Man Square, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016 in Mason City, Iowa. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
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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.

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