This column was written yesterday afternoon, well before the problems the Democrats are having counting votes in the Iowa caucus.
Why you should ignore the results of the Iowa caucuses
By Paul Waldman
Opinion writer
Feb. 3, 2020 at 3:39 p.m. EST
Every four years, I write one column after another explaining why the Iowa caucuses are an abomination, with dramatic headlines like “ The presidential caucus needs to die” and “ The Iowa caucuses are a crime against democracy” (last August I even opened up a can of hurt on the Iowa State Fair). And yet the caucuses survive. So with the event happening Monday evening, I make another plea, in particular to Democrats not fortunate enough to reside in the Hawkeye State:
Whatever the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, you should ignore it.
I don’t mean you should turn off your TV and toss your WiFi router in a Faraday cage. What I mean is that when you’re deluged with hot takes and somber assessments of What It Means, you should try as much as you can to not let it affect the decision you make in your own primary, whenever that will be.
That can be awfully hard to do, of course. For one thing, chances are that a candidate or two will drop out within the next couple of days because they didn’t perform well in the caucuses. In 2008, for instance, Joe Biden got an underwhelming 0.9 percent of the votes in Iowa and immediately shuttered his campaign.
But when you think about it, it’s ludicrous to end your campaign because of the results in one state with less than 1 percent of the U.S. population. The reason candidates feel they have no choice is that it becomes very difficult to gain support when the news media has written your obituary.
This is not a new phenomenon. In a 1983 book about coverage of the 1980 campaign, political scientists Michael J. Robinson and Margaret A. Sheehan identified a phenomenon they called “deathwatch coverage,” in which struggling candidates are covered in the press only so reporters can say that their campaigns are just about dead, focusing on what was done wrong and why voters rejected them. Once that coverage begins, it becomes impossible to raise money or garner new adherents, because all anyone asks is when they will drop out.
One of the seldom-spoken rules of campaign coverage is that we in the media are always looking for reasons to write off candidates, so we can stop paying attention to as many of them as possible and get down to a one-on-one conflict that has the key elements of drama out of which storytelling is built.
But, as a voter, you don’t have to submit. You have free will. If the candidate you like comes in eighth in Iowa Monday night, you aren’t required by law to switch to a different candidate.
“But what would be the point?” you might ask. The point would be to use your vote not as an instrument of immediate practicality, but as a means of expression. If your candidate has been written off, vote for them anyway to show that you think people should still take them seriously. If enough people did that, the post-Iowa verdict wouldn’t be binding on the electorate, and more candidates would feel they could continue to make their case.
There’s another key reason why we shouldn’t let the Iowa results determine what happens afterward: By all accounts, they’re going to be very close. According to polls, four candidates are bunched within about seven percentage points, which means that the order in which they finish shouldn’t mean all that much.
Let’s imagine this scenario: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wins Iowa, with Biden trailing by one point, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and former South Bend, Ind., former mayor Pete Buttigieg behind Biden by four. The headlines the next day will say “Sanders wins! Biden close behind!” Everyone will then proclaim that it’s a two-person race, and Warren and Buttigieg — along with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and everyone else — are toast.
But what if we move a few thousand votes around and get this result: Warren’s vaunted ground game comes through and she sneaks ahead of Sanders by half a point; Buttigieg comes in third and Biden falls to fourth. In that case, the headlines will say “Warren roars back! Biden falls flat on face!” We’ll then be told that it’s a two-person race between Warren and Sanders, and Biden might as well pack it in.
Those two radically different results are based on moving around just a few thousand votes. Some are predicting record turnout this year, which could mean as many as 250,000 Democratic caucus-goers. That would mean a 1-percent difference is just 2,500 votes. And it could be smaller than that. In 2012, Mitt Romney was announced as the winner of the caucuses, but a few weeks later it turned out that Rick Santorum actually won, by 34 votes.
Did those 34 votes mean that one or the other was a better campaigner or was more in tune with the desires of their party’s electorate? Of course not. It was practically a coin flip, and the fact that Romney came out ahead on election night meant that he got all the benefit of everyone putting “winner” next to his picture.
Once the results come in Monday night (or Tuesday morning), it will be awfully hard to resist summing them up in a neat little narrative that casts the one in first as the glorious victor, maybe one other candidate as a half-winner for “exceeding expectations” (another meaningless idea), and everyone else as a pathetic loser who ought to slink off so we don’t have to look at them anymore. You’ll see it said, but you don’t have to believe it. It’s up to you.
Read more:
Jennifer Rubin: What good are the Iowa caucuses anyway?
Karen Tumulty: Uncertainty hangs over Iowa — and the 2020 race
Jennifer Rubin: Five things we will learn in Iowa
Stephen Stromberg: Imagine if Joe Biden weren’t so bad at running for president
Karen Tumulty: Amy Klobuchar’s daughter wins Iowans for her mother, one hot dish at a time
David Byler: The Des Moines Register just canceled a poll — and shook up the Iowa caucuses
Matt Bai: It might be time to take Bloomberg seriously
Read the latest edition of the 2020 Post Pundit Power Ranking
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