Iowa Congressional Districts Map

Iowa specific discussion of vote share and mathematics behind impact on delegate allocation of its 41 Delegates. This is part of mathematics of delegate allocation notes in the series of Delegate Mathematics diaries.

Primary Election/Caucus: Monday 3 February 2020: Iowa Precinct Caucuses. begins at 19:00CST (0100 UTC). Turn up early for signing in and getting ready. Specially with needing to register your first preference early.

Participation: Must be 18 on 3rd Nov 2020 (General election day) to participate.

Only registered Democrats, residents of the precint are allowed to participate

Same day voter registration/enrollment is available (turn up an hour ahead just in case if you plan to register). Bring a valid ID if you plan to register. Although if you are reading this you should have already checked you were registered a year ago.

Iowa State Democratic Party Caucus Info Site: https://iowademocrats.org/2020-caucuses/

Dedicated Caucus info site: https://www.thecaucuses.org/

Voter ID Laws: Iowa is a voter ID law state (so get your IDs in place well before general election). Although not needed for caucus. https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/voterinformation/voterIDfaq.html

Iowa is a small level voter suptression state https://www.lwv.org/lwv-iowa-pushes-back-voting-purge-aimed-returning-citizens (so be so kind as to check your own tregistration and all your friends and aquitances and nodding peoples registration)

The caucus process

Basics: A three tier (stage) delegate selection process is in place.

Stage 1: Precinct level caucuses take place and delegates selected to be sent to next stage

Stage 2: County level caucuses/convention (made up of delegates from stage 1) which in turn select the delegates to next (Congressional District/State) caucuses

Stage 3: Congressional District/State level caucus/convention (made up of delegates from stage 2) which in turn select the delegates to national convention.

This stage 3 event a state convention is planned with 2100 delegates. This number has been distributed further down the chain to stage 2 and then to stage 1 all proportionally based on the number of party members, how many voted for Democrat governor, and how many voted for Democrat president.

See Diary https://dailykos.com/stories/1912162 by Chris Reeves (Kossack and DNC Member) for extra info. Oh and a caucus strategy guide https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/1/1478099/-Caucus-Strategy-101

What is up for grabs?

Each congressional district has set number of delegates to be allocated from results of that particular district. The statewide (at-large) delegates are allocated from statewide results.



Basic Data: There are 41 delegates available in total in the state. There are 4 congressional districts (CD). So including the state-wide allocations of at-large delegates and PLEO (party leaders and elected officials) delegates, there are 6 different allocation units.

Number Of Delegates Available Allocation Unit/District Delegates AvAILABLE Congressional District 1 (CD1) 7 Congressional District 2 (CD2) 7 Congressional District 3 (CD3) 8 Congressional District 4 (CD4) 5 Pledged PLEO (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) 5 Statewide (At-Large) 9

There are 6 polity units (4 congressional districts, 1 at large, and 1 PLEO) where delegates are allocated. Most of these units have an odd number of allocations. Therefore the benefits of even a tiny difference in support are immediately visible in number of delegates achieved.

What is needed to make the difference in number of National convention delegates?

Normally here in a voting primary state I would include a table with districts and percentage support needed. But this is Iowa caucus and given the current level of spread in support coupled with non-homogenous support (ie support for different candidates are in small pockets all over the map) it is meaningless to include here for now. I will be including it in other states that will be covered.

In a two way contest, the odd numbers of delegates would favour one candidate over other.

In a three way contest, units, CD1, CD2, CD4, PLEO will act as a decisive places where one presidential candidate will gain an upper hand over other two. Thereby providing a hard to compensate for edge in overall number of delegates.

CD 3 will act as marking out the lagging candidate.

In a four way contest, CD1, and CD2 will act as marking out the lagging candidate, while CD4, PLEO, and At-Large allocations will act to highlight the candidate that is ahead. Most Iowa polls are indicating a 4 way contest.

Other considerations:

Some people have expressed possibility of Republicans crashing the Democratic Party caucus due to there really being no Republican contest, thus boosting Tulsi Gabbard. These are mostly unnecessary concerns. State party political platforms and county/state party officials aree elected by the convention. Thus it is unlikley that any Republican is going to miss out and lose control or influence over their own party and their party platform and agenda. Although I will accept that there might be a handful of people somewhere who will turn up.

Useless Projections Based on latest Iowa Polling

FiveThirtyEight has the following support levels in their aggregated polling. Biden 20.6, Sanders 18.3, Buttigieg 17.1, Warren 15.1, Rest 28.9

Hypothetically if the support was uniform across all districts and the rest of other supporters neatly aligned in same proportions it would translate into delegate counts of,

CD1 Biden 2, Sanders 2, Buttigieg 2, Warren 1,

CD2 Biden 2, Sanders 2, Buttigieg 2, Warren 1

CD3 Biden 2, Sanders 2, Buttigieg 2, Warren 2

CD4 Biden 2, Sanders 1, Buttigieg 1, Warren 1

However the support levels currently are all in such low figures that individual precint caucuses will be all higgeldy piggeldy with individual candidates support level which will range very wildly on a granular level. On top of that there will be many precincts where some of the four even including Biden are likely to not muster the requisite basic support.

Plus between these four candidates they only account for 71.1% leaving a whole chunk of 28.9% to shuffle around or stay uncommited.

So all these contribute to people trying to Tango when Frankie Goes To Hollywood is playing Relax in the background.

Other Bits Everyone Chatters About: At 1700 odd precint caucuses, people electing from anything between 1 and 10 county level delegates, where each place while minimum needed remains 15% or higher, important precincts will be those electing 1 to 3 delegates where massive culling takes place. Little pockets of support, or in cases even just 1 person makes all the diiference.

Ultimate difference will be who can compete in every caucus, not necessarily have majority, but just enough to etch out a delegate or two at every place.

Anecdotally in 2016, there were precints where less than 1 to 10 people decided upto 3 delegates to county convention. (Not able to link but, I had read it somewhere previously, but now searching for Iowa caucus stuff is presents a plethora of stuff).

Campaign organizers and analysts are no doubt are walking around with a list of every precint and how many county delegates it elects and where they might be able to gain an edge. I did not think including a 1700 lines list of precints would be particularly useful here in this diary.

People keep saying it is complicated. Do not fall for that trap. These are one of the simplest things around. Stage 1 elects people to stage 2. Stage 2 people elect people to stage 3. and stage 3 elect to National convention. What could possibly be complicated about that? It is electoral college more personal micro level.

If anyone still harps on about it being complicated, probably just needs 10 minutes to read the process, and depending on when and where they went to school maybe something between 5 minutes to 1 month to figure out the mathematics involved.

Almost all news media, news sites keep portraying it as a complicated mathematics. Instead they should be trying to report on how this is such a basic mathematical skill and that it is an indictment of our education system, our priorities, and our current culture that that attempots to cripple us and our children of basic knowledge of mathematics. Thereby cultivating all subsequent generations with built in anti-intellectualism. This is a mechanism by which the fascists and eemagogues and Republicans attempt to prevent us from figuring out that they are cheating and stealing. That is how we end up with massive tax breaks for the super rich being sold to public as generating more tax revenue. This is a policy and systemic design. The fact that almost all US media treats this as complicated mathematics is a generational tragedy, deathless sorrow, and collective suicide all rolled into one.

Other business at the caucaus: These are also party organizing events and elects for party officials at the caucus levels also take place at this time. Important local party stuff also takes place. State party platform would be influenced.



What is this three different results that is going to be reported from caucus?

So Iowa Democratic Party has stated that it will report three pieces of data.

The total votes/stated preference in the first round (aka alignment) in the precint caucus. The total votes/state preferences after all those who did not cross the threshold have moved to their second preference. Project Equivalent makeup of delegates of the States delegation to the National Convention

This does not mean there will be three winners. (See below my point about winners and losers). This is Iowa Democratic Party attempt to remain relevant and maintain their first in the nation status (however unjust that is).

The three pieces of data give the analysts a better comprehension of what is happening on a more granular level thus allowing for observation of additional information. If Iowa was a microcosm of the nation, then we can extrapolate and project the data to predict performances in other states for each candidate a bit better. (I am not saying it is a microcosm, in fact I would venture to suggest that it should lose its first in the nation status)

First round data gives us what peoples first preferences are.

The second data gives us an indication of where differeces are and who are the candidates that have a wider appeal among voters whose first preference was someone else. Where do these voters flock to when their first choice is not available.

The third data is just for the people who tally the delegate counts for National Convention. Iowa does not have sufficient number of delegates to make much difference unless one candidate manages to sweep the state with excess of 75% or higher voter support.

Winners and Losers?

This is Democratic Party Presidential Primary. There are no winners and losers no matter how much press try to spin it. Contest is at every single congressional district across all 50 states, and District of Columbia, and the 6 territories where USA maintains colonial rule.

It is a long and hard slog where each delegate has to be fought for. Gains are accrued slowly over time. The candidates will be ahead or behind by a small margin but it will get progressively harder to catch up with the front-runner. Analyze where you can get that extra delegate for your favoured candidate and focus your efforts there.

Plenty Democrats have won the nomination and the Presidency without being able to show anything in Iowa.

References:

Iowa Democratic Party: https://iowademocrats.org/2020-more-caucus-documents/

National Democratic Party: https://democrats.org/2020-2/

Here is a link from last election cycle related to Iowa (it was a bit belated as I had not realised it might have been useful in time in 2016): https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/2/2/1478577/-Iowa-Why-Some-Claim-a-23-21-Split-Some-Mathematics