On February 3, 2020, Iowa Democrats will hold the first Presidential contest of the campaign. The RCP poll average for Iowa currently shows a close race with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg in front with 24%, Sanders at 18%, Warren at 18% and Biden at 16% (and no one else polling above 5%). While these polling numbers will certainly change, we believe it helpful to consider how the caucus rules could impact the delegate selection.
The Iowa Democratic Party issued a 77 page document explaining how the caucus will work this year, making several changes to prior years. Let’s start with the basics. The party runs a caucus in each precinct in Iowa at 7 pm on February 3, 2020. The caucus is open to any person who is eligible to register to vote in the state of Iowa who is at least 18 years of age and who is either a registered Democrat or who registers as a Democrat at the caucus. Thus, an independent voter can show up and register at the caucus as a Democrat and can participate. Each precinct is allocated a certain number of delegates, who will attend County Democratic conventions in March and then a State Democratic convention in May. Ultimately, there will be 41 pledged delegates (allocated by Congressional district) and 8 unpledged delegates (the 5 DNC members and 3 members of Congress). Each caucus holds a “first expression of preference” with participants backing candidates that fail to garner 15% of the caucus being given 15 minutes to realign themselves with another candidate who in the final expression is above the 15% minimum threshold. Only one round of realignment is permitted. A final expression of preference is taken and then delegates to the county conventions are allocated proportionally based on the final expression. For the first time in 2020, the Democrats are experimenting with satellite conventions and will also report the “vote count” of the final expression.
The implications of the caucus rules is that if a candidate fails to get 15% in any given precinct, that candidate’s supporters will be forced to select another candidate. Thus, if the current preferences were to hold, none of the candidates polling below 15% would receive any delegates. While this will take place precinct by precinct, the result is that ~20-25% of the voters backing Klobuchar, Yang, Steyer, Gabbard, Castro, Bloomberg and Booker will all be forced to select one of the other four candidates above the threshold. We don’t know yet to whom these participants will migrate to as their second choice, but it’s clear that the rules will force some movement in terms of preferences. Who benefits from this forced reallocation? It’s not entirely clear who a Yang or Gabbard voter in the first round might support in the final round.
We believe that the rules on balance favor the Progressive candidates of Warren and Sanders for two reasons. First, caucuses tend to attract a sub set of the eligible voters, generally the most partisan voters. There are approximately 613,000 active registered Democratic voters. In 2016, approximately 171,000 voters participated or a turnout ratio of 28%. We believe that the partisan turnout will likely favor Warren and Sanders. Second, if in any precinct either of the progressives fail to reach the minimum threshold, we anticipate that they will caucus with the progressive candidate that does exceed the threshold. Putting these two factors together, we believe it’s advantage Warren and Sanders. In 2016, Bernie Sanders overperformed the pre-caucus polls and nearly defeated Clinton (700 state delegates for Clinton to 697 state delegates for Sanders). Expect the most progressive candidates — i.e. Warren and Sanders — to once again outperform in the 2020 Democratic caucus.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 