The FiveThirtyEight Team Goes To Iowa

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.”