The Iowa Fracas

This was going to be one of my points earlier but I forgot until after I was done and I've got more to say on this than on the other bits. Also I have more time to kill while looking busy and demographics all look important on my screen even when they aren't.

Presidential Primary Season (I put it in capitals to make it look important), where we choose (for the sake of this discussion) the two candidates who will be competing for the highest office in the land. And the lead off state, the one that sets the stage for the rest of the primaries, the one that can make or break candidates is... Iowa? And the method they use for this litmus test is... a caucus?

Now I have nothing against Iowa. It's a fine state. I drove through it once. The most memorable thing there was the Mississippi River, and we may have had lunch there, but to this day I'm not sure if we were in Iowa or Indiana at that point. Regardless, my point is that I have nothing against Iowa or Iowans, just a few problems with them always being the first presidential primary state.

First the problem with Iowa. For those of you who don't know your geography, Iowa is in that middle part of the country you probably never had any reason to go to. With a population of almost 3,000,000 people it makes up almost a whole percentage point of the United States. Their caucuses due partly to their nature, which I'll get to in a minute, attract astonishingly low turnout. (This year they set records with a little over 15% of eligible voters.)

Now even this small sample could be meaningful if it were demographically representative. Well, Iowa is 92% white (75% nationally) and if other statistics were easily accessible at work I'd have more. Suffice it to say that it isn't a diverse state.

On top of all that, they use a caucus. I've never been to an Iowa presidential caucus, I hear they're quite the experience but we've all been involved in a caucus of one sort or another at some point in our lives. It's just a glorified way of saying 'everyone go stand under the sign of your favorite candidate'. Everyone has to show up at one time, they have to stay until voting is finished (several hours sometimes), and they can try to convince each other to change their votes in the middle of it. This means that it's pretty much only attended by people with nothing better to do, people that don't have kids or jobs that keep them busy from 7 until 9 or 10 at night.

Then when all of the shenanigans are over candidates are declared winners and losers. A victory in Iowa makes a good start to the campaign and a loss can (and usually does) end a few campaigns every year. Campaigns that are ended based mostly on the opinions of the .15% of Americans who happen to live in Iowa and have nothing better to do on that night. That is why I hate the Iowa Caucus.