Let’s talk about the three states that could determine the fate of the Democratic candidates for the presidency: Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. A total of 16 electoral votes of the 538 available. It seems that is where all the action is.
Each party in Iowa sponsors a local neighborhood meeting in January. The meetings, called “caucuses,” are open to any voter who wants to support that party. At the caucus party members discuss political issues and candidates. They also elect representatives called “delegates” to the county convention. The same discussions occur at the county conventions, and the county convention elects delegates to the state convention. At the state level the convention selects delegates to the national convention. Quite convoluted!
So, what is important to Iowans? According to the Des Moines Register Republican poll respondents are seeking discussion of fiscal and defense matters. Republican poll respondents are seeking discussion of fiscal and defense matters. Ninety percent or higher say they want candidates to spend “a lot” of time talking about the budget deficit, national defense, taxes and terrorist groups such as the Islamic State, or ISIL.
“The U.S. looks like a weak power to all these foreign countries,” Republican poll respondent said. These new candidates need to lay out how they’re going to handle that. No one wants to overstep, but we need to clean things up.”
Democrats, conversely, are far more interested in hearing about domestic policy. Energy (92%) and income inequality (90%) top the list of issues that Democrats say candidates should spend a lot of time discussing.
Just one issue ranks in the top five for likely caucus attendees from both parties: job creation.
These differences illustrate a fundamental disagreement between the parties over the role of government. While Democrats believe government can and should address social and economic issues, Republicans are less confident about its ability to solve such problems and focus instead on limiting taxes and spending while maintaining national defense.
“What you’re seeing in the Iowa data here is simply a reflection of the agendas of the leadership,” Manza said. “It’s the voters following the leaders — the rhetoric of the leaders and the policy priorities of the leaders.”
Especially wide divergences emerge on a few issues.
90% of Democrats want to hear candidates talk about income inequality — making it the No. 2 issue. For likely Republican, though, income inequality ranks 19th out of the 20 issues tested by the poll, with 36% of respondents saying they wish candidates would devote a lot of time talking about it.
An even wider gap between Democrats and Republicans is evident on climate change. While 81% of Democrats planning to caucus say they want to see candidates focus on it, just 18% of likely Republican voters are interested in hearing a lot about the issue.
There are areas, too, where the interests of likely caucus attendees from the two parties are more aligned. An equal percentage of Democratic and Republican respondents say candidates should talk about job creation. Likewise, discussing immigration is important.
Just 48% of GOP respondents say they want candidates to spend a lot of time talking about abortion and same-sex marriage rates even lower.
Away from Iowa, many other states delegates to the party’s national convention that nominates the presidential and vice presidential candidates are selected in a primary election. Party members go to the polls and vote for the presidential candidate of their choice. Delegates for the national convention are awarded to each candidate based on the number of votes the candidate receives in the primary election.
CNN suggests that “the influence Iowa is increasing even as the state’s odds of predicting the nomination’s winner may be shrinking”. ABC reports that “Iowa Democrats hold a nearly perfect track record of predicting the eventual party nominee in six contested races; getting it wrong only twice in 1992 and in 1988. However, when it comes to choosing the general election winner, Iowans have predicted only correctly twice: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008”.
They go on to say “On the other side of the aisle, Iowa Republicans are ill-fated by a rather poor track record of predicting the eventual party nominee. The winner of the caucuses has gained the nomination twice in six contested races since 1980: Robert Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000.
In every contested Democratic nomination race in this century, the winner of the Iowa caucuses has eventually won the nomination. That’s a measure of how much momentum candidates can earn, especially in this era of pervasive news coverage, from winning that kickoff contest. Conscious of that history, the leading 2020 candidates have courted Iowa more aggressively than any other state on the primary calendar, whether measured by time, money or staff.
But the increasing diversity of the Democratic electorate — compounded by the new racial dynamics of this race — raises the prospect that the 2020 contest could end Iowa’s winning streak in predicting the eventual nominee. The reason is that while it’s eminently possible to win Iowa, a virtually all-white state, without appealing to black or other minority voters, it’s almost impossible to win the nomination without cross-racial appeal.
For that reason, some Democrats are looking to South Carolina, a heavily African American state that votes fourth on the primary calendar, as a better gauge of how the race will ultimately unfold than either Iowa, which votes 3rd, or New Hampshire, which follows with the first primary eight days later.
So, while many think Iowa and New Hampshire are a good places to get your feet wet, South Carolina is a place where you dive in the political pool and really start to swim,”
The predominant role that Iowa and New Hampshire play in the nomination process is in stark contrast to the rest of the US where as much as 40% of the primary voters may be nonwhite.
Curiously racial contrast has muted since 2000 for one big reason. That is, the winners of the Iowa caucuses all performed well with black voters in subsequent states, particularly Al Gore in 2000, Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
This year, things might be different with support among, for example African Americans.
In Iowa the latest polls show the leading 5 candidates are white. Warren is at 28%, Buttigieg at 20%, Sanders is18% and Biden is 12%. Harris, a black African American is next.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren a significant advantage state and national polls among white voters with or without. Given the strength of the organization she’s built in the state, some local observers now consider her a clear favorite.
However, she has seen little support in polls among black voters, who cast about one-fourth of all the 2016 Democratic primary votes. This is ok in Iowa — or New Hampshire — but it is a problem starting with Nevada and especially South Carolina. Among the top 5 of current Iowa contenders only Biden has displayed a consistent appeal for African American voters in polls.
So, perhaps Iowa’s streak of picking the party winners might end next year. The biggest question remaining in the 2020 race, in fact, may be whether a disappointing showing for Biden in Iowa — and possibly New Hampshire, too — will cause large numbers of black voters in later states, especially South Carolina, to move away from him.
And of course, Iowa is getting campaign cash and face time and is receiving far more spending on television advertising than any other state. Biden has already spent about $700,000, but Buttigieg has spent almost $2 million in Iowa television without spending anything in the other three states. Sanders sent $1.7 million in Iowa, Bennet of Colorado about $1.1 million and Harris nearly $600,000 in Iowa.
Warren hasn’t yet aired any television ads, but the data shows that she’s booked more television advertising in Iowa than anywhere else.
You have to visit Iowaa lot, so through October 1, almost all of the major Democratic candidates — including Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, Harris and Klobuchar — have made about twice as many trips to Iowa as New Hampshire; only Warren has kept a closer balance between them. Harris has virtually moved to Iowa, and Buttigieg, is close behind. The leading contenders have also blanketed the state with campaign offices and organizing staff.
According to Vox, New Hampshire is a rare state where Joe Biden doesn’t hold a commanding lead over the Democratic presidential field, creating an opportunity for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to not only take the state with the first-in-the-nation primary but potentially emerge as the field’s progressive favorite.
“It’s a bona fide race already. Sanders carried the state by a wide margin in 2016, but voters aren’t so sure they’ll support him again in 2020 with Warren on the ballot”.
Voters could be torn between the two. Some voters think “In a perfect world, they’d be running mates.”
National polls have shown Biden is typically the second-choice candidate for Sanders supporters, and vice versa. But in New Hampshire, 34 percent of Sanders voters said Warren was their second choice, compared to 18 percent who selected Biden, per the July CNN/UNH poll. Sanders was the second choice for nearly 40 percent of Warren voters, and the poll showed Warren and Sanders competing for second among Biden voters.
And few of these progressive voters said they were considering Biden, even with his lead in state and national polls. Many said he was a last resort they’d vote for him if he was the Democratic nominee, but they wanted to support a candidate they genuinely believed in during the primary. Others said Biden was a nonstarter.
New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary and second major presidential contest is a crucial contest for Warren and Sanders. For one thing, the two candidates are from neighboring states (Sanders from Vermont and Warren from Massachusetts). It’s also high-stakes for Sanders because he won the New Hampshire primary by a historic 152,000 votes in 2016, when he faced off against Clinton. The question is how many of his 2016 supporters he can hang on to, and how many Warren can scoop up.
At one stop in North Conway, a voter asked Sanders point-blank why they should support him over Warren. He said: “Elizabeth is a friend of mine, and you will make that decision yourself”.
New Hampshire voters still have six months to do so. But many of them know all too well that in order for Sanders and Warren’s progressive ideas to win, one of the candidates will eventually have to lose. The competition among these two progressives is fierce — if still largely for second place.
Sanders has typically polled a few points ahead of Warren in New Hampshire, and at times has even polled ahead of Biden. But national pollsters have noted a problematic trend for Sanders: He seems to have more of a ceiling on his base, causing some doubts he can expand beyond his fervent core supporters. Warren is still third in most New Hampshire polls but has shown herself more able to grow — nationally, and here in the Granite State too.
“In terms of trajectory, it’s all in Warren’s favor,” said Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University’s Polling Institute. “I think you see it on the ground, Sanders still has his core support, which is huge support, but you don’t see him expanding on that. Warren … you see her drawing out new people at each event.”
Langkau, the Groveton voter who’d attended both candidates’ events, would be personally affected by their proposed policies. A third-year school teacher, she makes $37,000 per year and is bogged down by $80,000 in student debt. She likes Sanders’s proposal to raise teachers’ starting salaries to $60,000 but also appreciate’s Warren’s background as a public teacher and her plan to erase student debt for most Americans.
New Hampshire voters gave Bernie Sanders his first big win during his scrappy 2016 run against Hillary Clinton. Sanders’s decisive primary victory shocked the political establishment and helped drive lasting momentum for his “political revolution.”
The 2020 primary is a far cry from the binary choice between the establishment-backed Clinton and the anti-establishment Sanders. With so many Democrats still running, voters are overwhelmed with choices.king a look at is Elizabeth Warren.
It’s all been enough to leave New Hampshire feeling more than a little neglected. “It’s been a slow fall,” says Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire and author of “Stormy Weather,” a history of the New Hampshire primary. Scala says New Hampshire is receiving the least attention from the Democratic candidates probably since the 2004 race, when most of the field also burrowed into Iowa and largely ceded the first-in-the-nation primary to the two regional candidates, Kerry and Dean.
This year several factors appear to driving the campaigns to prioritize Iowa over the other early states even more than usual.
The first is the sheer size of the field. In polling this year, Democratic voters have already shown a clear reluctance to seriously focus on more than a few candidates, and the campaigns believe that narrowing tendency will significantly intensify once states begin voting.
The historic axiom has been that there are “three tickets out of Iowa,” meaning that only the top three finishers there remain viable in later states.
Given the amount of money and media attention candidates can now command, This may not be that the rule still applies,
Another factor tilting the candidates toward Iowa, especially relative to New Hampshire, is the belief that it will be very difficult for anyone — even Biden — to dislodge one of the two senators from neighboring states, Warren and Sanders. For everyone except Biden, Warren and Sanders, the dominant assumption may be that the best way to run competitively in New Hampshire is to ride the momentum from a good showing in Iowa.
Yet despite all these factors steering the candidates toward Iowa, the prominent racial divergence emerging in the Democratic race increases the possibility that Iowa this year could send out a false positive, picking a favorite who does not ultimately win.
Even Biden’s own advisers privately acknowledge that failing to win Iowa or New Hampshire would threaten his campaign. But whatever happens in Iowa, New Hampshire and even Nevada, the campaign believes that if Biden can retain enough support from black voters to win South Carolina, he could restore his viability. The calendar at that point would benefit him because so many of the states that vote in the next few weeks after South Carolina — beginning with the Super Tuesday cluster of primaries just three days later — have large populations of African Americans, Hispanics or both. That means it will be harder for Warren or any other remaining contender to win most of those states — from Alabama and Arizona to Florida, Texas and California — while depending primarily on white voters, especially those with college degrees.
It will be “mathematically impossible” for any candidate to run strongly on Super Tuesday without first receiving, in effect, a stamp of approval from African American voters in South Carolina. Biden “can use South Carolina as a place of political rehabilitation and come out well,” he says. Although it now looks less likely, South Carolina could also serve as a springboard for either of the two African American candidates in the race — Harris or Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey — if they first demonstrate strength in one of the three states that vote before it. Obama followed that model to eclipse Clinton in 2008.
Despite its public bravado, Biden’s camp doesn’t want to find out whether it’s possible to win the nomination without carrying either of the first two, or even any of the first three, states that vote before South Carolina. But until one of Biden’s rivals shows more appeal for African American voters, it’s not unreasonable for his advisers to hope that it’s South Carolina this year that will predict the nominee — no matter how much time and money the field is lavishing on Iowa.
In South Carolina, according to WBUR radio, big concerns are, ‘How do I get health care?’ and a need for wanting to get a better health care system in America, and prescription drug prices. Also, a lot of constituents are concerned, and afraid — given the level of violence in communities. There is a lot of interest in having candidates talk about what they would do to heal the country, to deal with the divisions. They are responding to the question: ‘Are you better off now than you were before?’ There are a lot of people who would respond to that and say, ‘I’m a lot worse off.’
Well, it’s a complicated field, but it is still early days, and things no doubt will change, and we will keep you updated. You can also see opinions on these ideas and more on our new Facebook page: Black and White Men Together Vote our Values.
This is Ken Scott Baron for the NABWMT signing off. Subscribe to this podcast where you get your other great podcasts.
*********
Credits:
CNN,Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics, Vox and WBUR Radio
