What to look for on Iowa Caucus Night: Democrats, a closer look
What to look for on Iowa Caucus Night and Presidential election in Iowa, 2016
This article covering the 2016 presidential election was written outside the scope of Ballotpedia's encyclopedic coverage and does not fall under our neutrality policy or style guidelines. It is preserved as it was originally written. For our encyclopedic coverage of the 2016 election, click here.
 Date: November 8, 2016 |
Winner: Donald Trump (R) Hillary Clinton (D) • Jill Stein (G) • Gary Johnson (L) • Vice presidential candidates |
Important dates • Nominating process • Ballotpedia's 2016 Battleground Poll • Polls • Debates • Presidential election by state • Ratings and scorecards |
2028 • 2024 • 2020 • 2016 Have you subscribed yet?
Join the hundreds of thousands of readers trusting Ballotpedia to keep them up to date with the latest political news. Sign up for the Daily Brew.
|
February 1, 2016
James A. Barnes is a member of the CNN Decision Desk and he will be helping to project the Democratic and Republican winners in Iowa. These are some of the things he's going to be looking at tonight.
One of the questions about the 2016 Iowa Democratic caucuses is what happens to the Democrats who caucused for former Sen. John Edwards eight years ago? Remember, he finished second in Iowa in 2008, just ahead of Hillary Clinton. The North Carolinian carried 30 of Iowa’s 99 counties in the caucuses that year.
Of those 30 counties, only five, Benton (near Cedar Rapids), Bremer (next door to Waterloo-Cedar Falls), and Guthrie, Madison and Warren (near Des Moines), are part of metropolitan areas. The other 25 represent rural and small town Iowa. In 2008, Clinton did carry the two largest metro counties on the more conservative western edge of the state—Pottawattamie (Council Bluffs) and Woodbury (Sioux City). But she also performed relatively better in more rural counties. Of those 30 “Edwards counties,” Clinton finished 2nd in 18 of them and tied Barack Obama, who won the 2008 Democratic caucuses, in one other. Obama finished 2nd in 11 of these counties.
Carrying rural counties can work to the advantage of a Democratic candidate. The Iowa Democratic Party allocates “delegate equivalents” on Caucus Night. That figure represents the number of state convention delegates that a candidate receives based on how well he or she does in the precinct caucuses and within each of Iowa’s 99 counties. The number of “delegate equivalents” is determined by the Democratic vote in each county and precinct in the last two presidential elections and the last two gubernatorial elections. That means two elections with a relatively high turnout for Democrats—fueled by more young and minority voters going to the polls—and two elections with a relatively low (and older) turnout for Democrats are used.
As a result, rural counties with less variation in their turnout between presidential and mid-term election end up receiving a few more delegates. So, turning out an extra 100 voters at one caucus location (say a campus precinct) may not win as many more extra delegate equivalents increasing at turning out by 10 extra voters in 10 rural precincts. Another way of thinking about the Democratic caucus is that they’re sort of conducting 1,681 elections instead of one statewide election. While larger urban counties and those will more college voters have accounted for relatively more delegate equivalents than they did in 2008, there’s still a modest advantage to winning rural counties.
Some political analysts have highlighted the increasing role that college graduates play in the Democratic coalition. In the 2008 Democratic caucuses, Obama won the top five Iowa counties with the highest percentage of adults 25 years and older who had at least a four-year college degree: Johnson, Story, Dallas Polk and Jefferson. He won eight of the top-10 “college grad” counties (Edwards won the other 2), and 13 of the top-15 college grad counties. Bernie Sanders has highlighted his expansive plans to reduce student debt and provide free tuition to public universities. And his campaign has extensively courted the student vote in counties like Johnson, which contains the campus of the University of Iowa and Story, where Iowa State calls home. Polls show Sanders as the overwhelming favorite of younger voters, but the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist shows Sanders and Clinton run about even among college graduates who indicate they’re likely to attend the Democratic caucuses.
Will women give Clinton and advantage in 2016 caucuses? In 2008, women made up 57 percent of the Democratic caucus-goers, according to the television networks’ entrance poll, which surveys a representative sample of caucus participants as they enter their meeting sites. Obama captured 30 percent of the Democratic female caucus attendees, besting Clinton who won 25 percent. (By comparison, 57 percent of the 2012 Republican caucus attendees were men.)
James A. Barnes is a senior writer for Ballotpedia and co-author of the 2016 edition of the Almanac of American Politics. He has conducted elite opinion surveys for National Journal, CNN and the on-line polling firm, YouGov.
See also
- Presidential election in Iowa, 2016
- Presidential Nominating Index: Clinton rules, but Sanders also rising
- Presidential Nominating Index: GOP elites tilt to Trump
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Presidential election, 2016/Polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
- Presidential election, 2016/Straw polls
