Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Iowa never happened


For the last year, the Iowa caucuses have dominated the political discourse in the United States. Presidential candidates from both major parties have poured money and manpower into the state, and traveled there time after time to pay homage to the awesome power of the Iowa State Fair Butter Cow.

And the result? Both major parties ended up with basically tie votes. Clinton and Sanders were so close that several contests had to be decided by coin tosses. On the GOP side, Cruz, Trump, and Rubio all finished in the low-to-mid 20% range. The arcane caucus rules make it impossible to predict precisely which candidates will come to the conventions with how many pledged delegates, but right now it looks like the two Democratic candidates will wind up with 22 each (plus or minus 1), and the three Republican candidates will all wind up with 7 each (plus or minus 1).

So, as far as determining which candidate will win the nomination in each race, the whole long, complicated Iowa caucus might as well have never happened.

Sigh.

No comments: