Joe Biden Wins Iowa, Smaller Caucus Cycle
The entire contest this year was conducted via mail.
Iowa, which featured a smaller caucus this cycle, is won by Biden.
The first call of the evening is in: Iowa has gone to Joe Biden.
In the Hawkeye State, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), Marianne Williamson, and “uncommitted” divided the remaining votes, with the president receiving 91% of the total.
While Biden's victory here is hardly shocking, let's pause to consider how the once-powerful Iowa caucuses came to be treated as such an afterthought.
The 2020 Democratic caucuses in Iowa were a total bust due to a technical malfunction and uneven tallying that caused results to be delayed. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Pete Buttigieg engaged in a fierce debate over who should win; Buttigieg prevailed in the end, securing a plurality of “state delegate equivalents,” a perplexing metric; Biden, the chosen nominee, came in fourth.
Upon deciding to reorganize the nomination schedule for this cycle, Biden naturally targeted Iowa. The electorate in the state does not correspond with the demographics of the modern Democratic Party; additionally, Biden intended to reward states that backed him, even though caucuses are perceived as less democratic than primaries because far fewer people participate in them.
Michigan and South Carolina moved up in the order, while Iowa fell. The traditional in-person caucus, in which participants moved around a room to indicate their support, is no longer in place. This year, the Hawkeye Democrats held an all-mail vote instead, and the results were released today.
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