Iowa: Tumultuous Beginnings for the 2020 Election Cycle

The Iowa Caucus, the first of all primaries of the 2020 election cycle, occurred on the evening of Monday, Feb. 3, 2020. Historically, Iowa caucuses have been major indicators of which candidates have had the most influence with voters, and who is favored among the candidates toward the beginning of the cycle. However, following a major catastrophe with the Iowa caucus’s reporting system, what has been the most transparent sign of popular candidates among voters has been rendered untrustworthy, as a winner of the caucuses was not announced Monday evening like it usually is. 

Like all elections, whether primary or general, voters are assigned to different voting precincts depending on their location. On the evening of Feb. 3, voters began to gather in their respective precincts: local churches, public schools, and community centers across Iowa. The Iowa Democratic Party, the party organization most concerned with planning a caucus this cycle, originally intended for a new app to make caucusing easier for all involved: the voters, the caucus workers, and, hoping for a fast turn around on numbers, the candidates. 

Unfortunately, that was not the case. Though the Iowa Democratic Party had found this new app, systematic training on how to operate the app had been pretty much left out of the formula for planning for the caucuses. In fact, it had been so difficult without any formal training, that many caucus-goers were struggling to download the app, nonetheless log into it and operate it. 

After realizing that accurate results would not be produced via the app, Iowa Democratic Party Leaders directed precinct chairs to report their caucus’s results like they had done in the past, by phone. Precinct chairs prepared to do just as they were told to but even had trouble reaching party leaders by phone. 

It was not until Tuesday afternoon that Iowa Democratic party leaders reported to the press their first set of accurate, though incomplete, results. The results showed former Mayor Pete Buttigieg with a slim lead over Senator Bernie Sanders. Senator Elizabeth Warren followed close behind Sanders, with former Vice President Joe Biden trailing farther behind. 

The results of the caucuses were final on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020, though many news outlets, including the Associated Press, stated that a winner was practically undeterminable. Nonetheless, the order of victories remained the same as when they were first reported on Tuesday. Mayor Buttigieg leads Sanders by 0.1%, with Sanders in a 4% lead over Warren. Biden has fallen behind Warren, with Klobuchar not too far behind.

The next round of caucuses will occur on Feb. 11, 2020, in New Hampshire. The results of the caucuses will hopefully be more accurate than those of Iowa.