There are two kinds of people on a college campus: the first are those who aren’t aware of presidential politics until after the primaries, and the second are comprised of students obsessively refreshing MSMBC and CNN polls. For the second group, an incredibly exciting yet virtually unimportant event happened this last week, igniting debate everywhere over the state of our democracy: The Iowa Caucuses. The amount of hype over the caucuses seems extreme, especially when considering the minor role they have on American politics at large.
Before understanding the incredible excitement, it’s first important to understand the absurdity of the caucus system:
Iowa, along with less than 15 other states, uses the caucus system to select their nominees for each respective party. Contrasting with primaries, in which members of each state simply vote throughout the day much like the general elections, caucuses are an event. Each party in each precinct gathers in a room. Delegates, or people elected to represent the wishes of the party in that area, are the deciding factor in which candidate “wins”. On the Republican side, this is decided though secret ballot, allowing for quicker results. Once votes are counted, each candidate will have received a certain amount of delegates which carries through to each state. This eliminates the usual mentality of “winner takes all”, as a ‘losing’ candidate still has the ability to win and keep delegates throughout the race.
The Democrats, on the other hand, have a much more arcane process. Imagine two different sides of the room, one marked “Hillary for President”, the other marked “Feel the Bern”. In Democratic caucuses, instead of a secret ballot, caucus participants stand on either side of the room, attempting to convince the other side to join and support their candidate. This results in hours upon hours of debate and physical motion.
Now we apply this understanding to the 2016 presidential race, specifically for the democrats.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were so close, and in many precincts caucus goers could not decipher who had won their district. In half of a dozen precincts, the democratic party found themselves in a draw: the only way to decide which candidate had won was to toss a coin. This was incredibly exciting for politics junkies because this procedure is so incredibly rare.
What does this all mean?
For Sanders supporters, this means a lot: being in a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton in the first state to vote is an incredibly good sign for his campaign.
For Hillary supporters, this was still not a loss: her campaign claimed their victory over Sanders by only two delegates.
For the American people, watching something like this happen can either be threatening or invigorating: some use this example to argue that the caucus system is insane and outdated. Others say it’s the life and breath of American representative democracy.
One thing is clear, this race is like no other. Although the results of the Iowa itself has little to no direct impact on which candidate will win the nomination, the results will certainly sway voters in New Hampshire, Carolina and so on.