An Apartment Divided: Iowa Caucus Aftermath
In the famous words of Bobby Shmurda, ‘about a week ago’ were the Iowa Caucuses. The results are in and the winners are Ted Cruz from the Republican Party and Hillary Clinton from the Democrat Party. The aftermath of the Iowa Caucuses has brought a lot of controversy, and we will use this week’s post to clear up confusion.
Ryan:
Hillary Clinton is the announced winner of the razor-thin race with Bernie Sanders, with the latest updated results of 49.84% and 23 delegates to 49.59% and 21 delegates. Now try explaining that your vote doesn’t matter. Before the night ended we also saw Governor Martin O’Malley suspend his campaign. Again, Iowa weeding out the competition. With such a close race it came with a lot of questions and concerns from Democratic voters. The biggest controversy is the notorious coin flip. Let’s clear up this controversy, a coin flip did not win Iowa for Hillary. I will use NPR’s flow chart to help clear up the confusion.
The grey section is where the coin flips happened. As for the coin flip being the determining factor, I understand the confusion and frustration, but this is a common practice when the race is as narrow as this race was. Some other tactics around the world have been drawing cards, pulling straws, but the most common is the coin flip. No matter what way the coin landed it would not have determined any other outcome. Now was the night chaotic and unorganized? Yes. The Iowa Democratic Party needs to address the issues that the Des Moines Register brought up. The IDP should have been ready for worst case scenarios and they weren’t. But I would like to applaud the volunteers who did a tremendous job on an important night.
Monday night generated a winner in Hillary Clinton, but the biggest story of the night was how close Senator Sanders was. I knew it was going to be a close race, but never thought it would be this close. Senator Sanders definitely shows that he has a ton of support and it looks like his momentum will continue as he has a 99% chance of winning New Hampshire. But the most important states for Sanders will be after New Hampshire. Senator Sanders polls well in white liberal states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. With Hillary Clinton’s diverse support she is still the heavy favorite to win the nomination, but we will see if Sanders’ youth movement can change that outcome.
Haley:
On the Republican side, the caucus turned out to be just as interesting as the Democrats. Ted Cruz won with 27.6%, Trump came in second with 24.3%, and Rubio came in third with 23.1%. 1) Donald Trump didn’t win. 2) Marco Rubio came in a very close third. 3) Ben Carson possibly lost votes due to unethical actions by the Cruz campaign.
Firstly, Ted Cruz shocked the world and won the top spot with 27.6% of the vote. Even though Ted Cruz fits the persona of the most recent caucus winners (a strong social conservative like past caucus winners Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum) and had debatably the best ground game of all the candidates, Donald Trump was the expected winner. For months Trump has been the frontrunner and his victory seemed more and more inevitable. If Donald Trump weren’t in the race, it would be no surprise for Cruz to win the caucus. But Trump is in the race, and Cruz winning showed Trump isn’t unstoppable after all.
Marco Rubio came in third place only one point behind Trump. This performance made him a clear choice to be the alternative to Trump and Cruz. Since Iowa, Rubio has gained several major endorsements and has significant momentum going into New Hampshire and South Carolina. Despite a questionable debate performance last night, Rubio’s Iowa performance put him in a great position to be the eventual nominee.
Lastly, the Cruz campaign has taken a lot of heat for their controversial actions on caucus night. It was reported Ben Carson would be returning home to Florida rather than traveling straight to New Hampshire. Many speculated that this meant Carson was suspending his campaign, but the Cruz campaign took the speculation to an entirely new level when they sent out official emails telling Carson supporters he was quitting and to throw their support behind Cruz. Now the jury’s still out on how much this impacted Carson’s 9.3% performance, but it showed there is some questionable morality in the Cruz operation. Cruz has since apologized for the incident. However, for a man who has based his campaign on stopping the “Washington cartel” he is certainly showing he’s learned a thing or two about dirty politics while in Congress.
Overall the Republican caucus was simultaneously predictable and surprising. Ted Cruz seems like an obvious choice to win Iowa, so it is clear to see how he was able to win. What is surprising is Trump was the first loser and it is now clearly a three-man race.
Behind the scenes…
Although Haley and I were unable to participate in the Iowa Caucuses as we live in D.C. we loved sharing the experience. Haley and I loved the snapchats, texts, and questions from our friends throughout the night. If you ever have any questions about a certain issue or candidate please reach out to us, as we promise to give unbiased answers. See you next time.
