Inside Iowa

Most criticisms directed against the Iowa caucuses are accurate. But it's hard to see what could take their place
January 20, 2008

Regular as a comet, the little neighbourhood party conferences known as Iowa's precinct caucuses have streaked across the American electoral sky. As early as last April, candidates were thick on the ground of what the Economist once called "that most wholesome of states." By 1st January, they had been joined by 2,500 accredited media representatives.

At 7pm on 3rd January, a record 346,000 caucus-goers assembled in 1,781 Iowa living rooms, courthouses, church basements, fire stations, classrooms, public libraries, high school gyms and recreation centres to debate resolutions, elect delegates to the county convention in March, and, oh yes, declare their presidential preferences. By 9pm, media magi were busy decoding the handwriting on the walls.

There was certainly enough to talk about. Turnout, especially of first-time caucus-goers, exceeded all previous experience. Barack Obama, 46, the first-term senator from Illinois, and Mike Huckabee, 52, the ex-governor of Arkansas, beat high-profile establishmentarians. Black and white, graduates of Harvard Law School and Ouachita Baptist University, respectively, in most ways they were the oddest couple in recent memory. But each was the youngest in his respective heat. They also shared the advantage likeliest to appeal to voters fed up with the status quo: both were new faces.

Why should a state the size of England, with a population of 3m, have all the fun, not to mention the millions of dollars in office, van, bus and car rentals, hotel, restaurant, catering, printing and copying services, plus ad revenue from nine television markets, that go with it? The 2004 caucuses brought an estimated $50m into Iowa. This year it seems likely that Clinton and Obama alone spent that much.

With only 10 per cent of a predominantly white and ageing electorate likely to show up, and rules only a party commission could love, the caucuses have long puzzled the rest of the world, while irritating voters in 48 other states. (The exception is New Hampshire, smaller and demographically less representative even than Iowa, whose first-in-the-nation primary five days after the Iowa caucuses is essentially the fish to Iowa's chips.)

In fact, the caucuses go back to the mid-19th century, when most states elected their convention delegates this way. But this was mostly forgotten by the early 21st century, when state after state had opted for the little general elections known as state-wide primaries, with their brigades of media consultants, Niagaras of campaign money for identikit television spots, and the spontaneity of a speech from the throne.

Visible to almost nobody beyond the state's borders, Iowa's increasingly anachronistic caucuses nonetheless survived into the modern era. Like many American institutions, they then collided with Vietnam. The watershed was the Democratic national convention in Chicago in 1968, where the irresistible force of antiwar protest met the immovable inertia of party regulars.

Among the fallout products was a blue-ribbon reform commission that decreed in 1969 that caucuses and primaries would be announced and publicised with enough lead time for all candidates to mobilise and organise their supporters. Proportional election would replace the traditional winner-take-all.

Compliance in primary states was technically easy. The election was scheduled as usual on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the month of a given state's choice. But in Iowa, where delegates to national conventions were elected in four stages from the precinct up, lead time had to be extended over months. Suddenly, and without prior intent, Iowa Democrats found themselves at the head of the national parade, where Iowa Republicans happily joined them.

In 1972 the new rules were tested, when George McGovern, the father of the reforms, entered the race as a dark horse candidate, and went on to win the nomination. Four years later, Jimmy Carter, a virtually unknown former governor of Georgia, did the same and was elected president.

Normally seen by most Americans at 70 mph from Interstate 80, and by the rest of the world hardly at all, Iowa has been seen quadrennially eyeball-to-eyeball at ground level ever since. The cycle begins in August, when the candidates appear at the state fair for the obligatory photo op with a corn dog (a frankfurter fried in maize meal batter). It ends the wintry morning after the caucus night before, when Des Moines airport sinks under an avalanche of rental car returns, and the caravan heads for New Hampshire.

As a predictor of winners, the caucuses are only a step ahead of a coin toss. Five of eight caucus winners have proceeded to the nomination. Of these, two made it to the White House. On the other hand, the institution has been a pretty good predictor of losers. What hasn't sold in Strawberry Point or Grundy Centre is unlikely to do better elsewhere, including the places where the campaign money comes from. The Democrat Chris Dodd and his colleague Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, dropped out on Thursday night after earning wide regard but few votes.

But for the frontrunners, the fun is just beginning. Obama made his point—that a post-Clinton Clinton might not be the inevitable successor to a post-Bush Bush; that he could energise armies of thirtysomethings and under like no candidate since JFK; that he could even win the endorsement of the lady who sculpts the butter cow at the state fair. Huckabee made his point too: that an evangelical Republican can be funny, play a bass guitar, bash Wall Street and K Street, and appeal to voters with annual incomes under $50,000.

What will happen to Iowa's peculiar institution? Poll watchers like Christopher Hitchens, the New York Times and Gil Cranberg, a former editorial page editor of the Des Moines Register, took swings at it. They were absolutely right to do so. The rules really do favour rural over urban caucuses. They distort the relationship between votes cast and convention delegates elected. They exclude voters who can't be there in person for reasons reaching from night jobs to service in Iraq. For all that Iowans are generally honest, earnest and civic-spirited, it is hard to make a case for their unique representativeness or virtue.

Yet once more, the caucuses have proven themselves as hard to kill as Dracula. According to Dave Redlawsk, a University of Iowa political scientist, it could be done. But it would require legislation, or consensus among 48—or 96—other state parties. Legislation, he suspects, would be ruled unconstitutional. Consensus on a different system has been as elusive as peace in the middle east. Meanwhile, he notes, there's something to be said for keeping at least one place where real candidates have to meet real voters, and Iowans have 36 years' experience.