What to look for on Iowa Caucus Night: Republicans, a closer look
What to look for on Iowa Caucus Night and Presidential election in Iowa, 2016
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 Date: November 8, 2016 |
Winner: Donald Trump (R) Hillary Clinton (D) • Jill Stein (G) • Gary Johnson (L) • Vice presidential candidates |
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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.
Former Gov. Mike Huckabee won the Iowa GOP caucuses in 2008 carrying 74 of the states’ 99 counties. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum took the 2012 caucuses carrying 63 counties. While both are running for president again this year, neither one is given much chance of doing very well in the caucuses, let alone win them. Still, their base is a rich prize for any candidate who could capture it.
Huckabee and Santorum won 55 of the same counties. Of those 55 counties, only six are part of metropolitan areas Guthrie, Madison and Warren Counties outside Des Moines; Mills, south of Council Bluffs; and Grundy, west of Waterloo-Cedar Falls. And only three of those remaining 49 have an urban population of more than 20,000: Des Moines County (Burlington), Wapello (Ottumwa) and Webster (Fort Dodge), all cities of about 25,000. The remaining 46 counties represent rural and small town Iowa. That turf could be prime territory for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Three-quarters of the counties are the central or western part of the state.
According to the network entrance polls, which survey a representative sample of caucus participants as they enter their meeting sites, half of the vote cast in both the 2012 and 2008 caucuses was cast in rural and small town Iowa. (In the Democratic 2008 caucus, less than a third came from this portion of the state.)
The Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, is thought to be stronger in the eastern part of the state, where former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul ran well in the 2012 caucuses. But it’s hard to predict where the first-time celebrity candidate is going to perform best.
Thirteen of the 17 counties that Romney carried four years ago were in metropolitan areas or adjacent to metro areas. The metro counties will be a battleground for the three leading GOP candidates, Cruz, Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture research, 30 of the state’s 99 counties are “farm-dependent” in which farming accounted for at 25% or more of the county’s earnings or 16% or more of the employment averaged over 2010-2012. In 2012, Santorum carried 27 of those 30 counties.
In the last two Iowa Republican Caucuses, born-again and Evangelical Christians made up a solid majority of the participants. According to the television networks’ entrance polls, in 2012, 57 percent were born-again or Evangelical, as were 60 percent in 2008. These voters were a major reason why Huckabee and Santorum captured the caucuses in a crowded field of candidates: Huckabee carried 46 percent of this vote on his way to winning the caucuses with 34 percent of the vote overall, and Santorum carried 32 percent of the born-again, evangelical vote to eek out his 25 percent victory over Romney. Cruz has made a major play for these Republican voters, but lately Trump has sought their support, warping up his Iowa caucus campaign at events with Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., who has endorsed him.
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
