Here’s What You Need To Cram For The Iowa Caucuses
In the FiveThirtyEight newsroom today, we’ve been greeting one another with “Happy Iowa Day!” We’ve been looking forward to these caucuses for a while, but maybe you’re a normal person and are just turning your attention to the 2016 election. Don’t fret — we have you covered. Here’s some recommended reading to get you up to speed.
Four Roads Out Of Iowa For Republicans — Donald Trump has a good chance of winning, but Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have a shot at taking him down. Here are four scenarios that could emerge from Iowa depending on how those three finish.
What Happens If Bernie Sanders Wins Iowa? — Sanders is competitive in Iowa, trailing Hillary Clinton only slightly. If Sanders wins Iowa, he’ll probably also win New Hampshire. Winning the first two states is typically a precursor to winning the nomination, but a victory for Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire could also just be a by-product of those states’ Sanders-friendly demographics. One thing is pretty clear: Sanders needs to win Iowa.
Iowa Isn’t The State Presidential Candidates Pretend It Is — Candidates like to talk about Iowa as the land of corn, cows and white people. But Iowa has actually become less agricultural and less white (though it’s still pretty white) in the last 45 years.
Ann Selzer Is The Best Pollster in Politics — Selzer became a celebrity among pollsters when in 2008 she predicted that a historically large turnout would push the Iowa Democratic caucuses in Barack Obama’s favor. FiveThirtyEight sat down with the “polling queen” of Iowa herself to see just what makes her so good at what she does.
A Day In The Life Of An Iowa Family Drowning In Campaign Ads — For the folks living in Iowa, there’s no escaping caucus season. An estimated 17,000 campaign advertisements aired on TV in the state in January, and that doesn’t include the phone calls, Facebook ads and more.
Does Donald Trump Need To Win Iowa? — A few days ago, our politics team talked over Trump’s chances of winning the nomination — if he wins Iowa and if he loses.
The Economy Is Better — Why Don’t Voters Believe It? — There’s no doubt that the economy has improved since 2008, when President Obama took office, but polls have revealed that Americans continue to be pessimistic. That makes sense for those whose lives haven’t improved since the recession, but in Iowa, the economy is objectively strong.
The Iowa Caucuses Count Will Never Be Perfect — In a rare bipartisan effort, the Iowa Democratic Party teamed up with its Republican counterpart to try to bulletproof data entry and expedite the tallying process. But avoiding all errors is impossible.