Iowa Caucus

[Kitsune9tails]

I have never personally shared the mentality of jumping onto the bandwagon of the perceived eventual winner, but that said, many people do exactly that.

What happened in Iowa is huge and will have effects felt clear into the 2024 administration.

Pundits are already spinning this as if this failure in Iowa reflects on the ability of Democrats overall to run systems (such as the health care system) as a group of people in Iowa were the same folk running things in DC.

There is no doubt in my mind that this will lead to Pete getting more votes than he would have otherwise, although those might come from nonvoters, rather than from his opponent's pools.

I am curious as to the historical data on how the top 4 in Iowa have previously finished over the past 16 years, although I think that changes in tech will largely diminish the relevance of that data. One source said that Obama was at 3% in Iowa at this point, but I don't know if they meant polls or caucus.

Something some talking heads on the Internet have been saying is that if the underlying data from Iowa is known (it probably hasn't been straightened out yet), then the release of the partial data could easily have been curated to create false impressions: a targeted Iowa bump as it were. I am filing that under 'unlikely but plausible'.

This is all before any kind of audit is done, which may in turn reveal more problems, which will have an effect however small on Democrats in general and caucuses in specific.

It also reflects upon the Electoral College process.

The main negative effect is on voter confidence, which could act as effective voter suppression, not to mention the flurry of lawsuits that will be launched in January 2021 whoever wins.

Someone needs to do something big to restore confidence in the voting process itself, and that someone will not be --cannot be-- the President.

From Wikipedia, about 2016:
"Despite a late challenge, Hillary Clinton was able to defeat Bernie Sanders in the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucus by the closest margin in the history of the contest: 49.8% to 49.6% (Clinton collected 700.47 state delegate equivalents to Sanders' 696.92, a difference of one quarter of a percentage point).[1] The victory, which was projected to award her 23 pledged national convention delegates (two more than Sanders), made Clinton the first woman to win the Caucus and marked a clear difference from 2008, where she finished in third place behind Obama and John Edwards.[2][3][4][5] Martin O'Malley suspended his campaign after a disappointing third-place finish with only 0.5% of the state delegate equivalents awarded, leaving Clinton and Sanders the only two major candidates in the race.[6] 171,517 people participated in the 2016 Iowa Democratic caucuses.[7]"

Here is the 2008 data from Wikipedia:
" Barack Obama - 32%
Hillary Clinton - 25%
John Edwards - 24%
Bill Richardson - 6%
Joe Biden - 4%
Christopher Dodd - 2%
Dennis Kucinich - 1%
Mike Gravel - 0%
Not sure/Uncommitted - 6%

The above results have a margin of sampling error of ±3.5 percentage points.[5] "

[Publius]

Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails

I am curious as to the historical data on how the top 4 in Iowa have previously finished over the past 16 years...

Here is a quick reference site for you. Just change the options on the left to see how everyone finished.

Since 2000:

Republican
2000: Bush (nominee)
2004: Bush (nominee - he ran unopposed for the nomination)
2008: Huckabee (McCain was nominee - he came in fourth in Iowa)
2012: Santorum (Romney was nominee - he came in second in Iowa)
2016: Cruz (Trump was nominee - he came in second in iowa)

Democrats

2000: Gore (nominee)
2004: Kerry (nominee)
2008: Obama (nominee)
2012: Obama (nominee - he ran unopposed for the nomination)
2016: Clinton (nominee)

For Republicans, they got two out of five right, but one of those was Bush running without an opponent, so it probably shouldn't be counted. Essentially it got 1 out of 4 right, and at the time it got the first one right most people thought they were out of their minds and that opponent was laughable.

For Democrats Iowa seems almost prescient, getting four out of four correct (Obama ran against no one once).

I think there is more correlation here than causation.

although I think that changes in tech will largely diminish the relevance of that data.

How so?

Something some talking heads on the Internet have been saying is that if the underlying data from Iowa is known (it probably hasn't been straightened out yet), then the release of the partial data could easily have been curated to create false impressions: a targeted Iowa bump as it were. I am filing that under 'unlikely but plausible'.

It's flat out ridiculous.

It also reflects upon the Electoral College process.

How so?

The main negative effect is on voter confidence, which could act as effective voter suppression, not to mention the flurry of lawsuits that will be launched in January 2021 whoever wins.

Someone needs to do something big to restore confidence in the voting process itself, and that someone will not be --cannot be-- the President.

This is interesting. Who and how do you think this could be accomplished? Maybe this should be a different thread.