The FiveThirtyEight Team Goes To Iowa

DES MOINES — Earlier this week, I wrote about the Ted Cruz campaign’s semi-fancy phone system, which lets volunteers log voter information directly into a database when they reach possible caucus-goers at home. Last night, Nate, Harry and I visited Hillary Clinton’s field office in Davenport, where we saw how her campaign is building on the lessons of the Obama efforts in 2008. Her volunteers are focusing on reaching key voters multiple times; they log each interaction on paper to make sure possible Clinton supporters become a little more informed and a little more committed each time — all culminating on caucus night. In their own ways, both operations impressed. But it’s worth remembering that data-driven political targeting isn’t a recent development. In fact, as early as the 1890s candidates were compiling pretty detailed information on their constituents and using that information to send targeted mailings. On this week’s episode of our podcast What’s The Point, I got a primer on the history of political data from Daniel Kriess of the University of North Carolina. Take a listen below, where you’ll finally get to hear that outro I recorded on Monday at the airport. You can also read more on the site or find the podcast in iTunes or your favorite podcast app. On next week’s show, I’ll continue the conversation with Kreiss and incorporate some of what I learned here in Iowa.

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AMES — Iowa State University is back in session, just in time for the caucus madness to begin. I sat down at Cafe Beaudelaire with María Alcívar, a 27-year-old graduate student in the university’s human development and family studies program who is trying to promote turnout among Latinos. Alcívar works with the Iowa branch of the the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, a national Latino anti-discrimination organization (she founded the Ames chapter). LULAC Iowa is campaigning to mobilize at least 10,000 Latinos to participate in the caucuses on Feb. 1. and Alcívar has been organizing trainings to educate Latino voters about the caucuses and why it’s important for them to show up. She said some of the rhetoric on immigration coming from Donald Trump has motivated Latinos in Iowa to become more politically active. “Trump has encouraged people to get out and do something, which is good,” Alcívar said. “It’s made the Latino community more aware about the importance of getting involved.” A little under 174,000 Iowa residents are Hispanic, according to the Census Bureau, or about 5.6 percent of the population. Alcívar thinks LULAC Iowa will meet its caucus-night goal, but the question of whether or not Latinos will continue to be active long-term, even without Trump’s back-handed motivation, is up in the air. “It’d be really cool if [this level of Latino political engagement] would stick around, but I don’t know,” she said. “You just never know.”