No good reason to let Iowa, NH warp presidential elections
The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary owe their first-in-the-nation status partly to circumstance. Decades ago, Iowa’s caucus was the initial step in a long, complex state process, which meant that the voting had to happen early in the year. New Hampshire was mostly trying to save money — by scheduling its primary on the same day as many annual town meetings, which were held before the spring mud season.
But circumstance has not kept Iowa and New Hampshire at the front of the line. An aggressive protection of their own selfinterest has.
It’s all worked out very nicely for the two states. A typical voter in Iowa or
New Hampshire has up to 20 times more influence than somebody in later-voting states, one study found. Sometimes, the two states have turned a parochial issue (ethanol) into a national priority.
I know the usual excuse for Iowa’s and New Hampshire’s special status: That the good people there take extra care in selecting candidates. And many Iowans and New Hampshirites are good people who take their civic duty seriously.
But step back and think about how paternalistic and condescending that explanation is. The residents of New Jersey, New Mexico, Indiana, Louisiana and other late-voting states somehow aren’t sufficiently civicminded or intelligent to choose their own presidential candidates?
Right now, I’m as obsessed as anyone with the earlystate polls. Yet I want to make a plea: The 2020 cycle should be the last time that Iowa and New Hampshire benefit at the country’s expense.
The strongest part of the case for change, of course, is the racial aspect of the current calendar. Iowa and New Hampshire are among the country’s whitest states. Demographically, Iowa and New Hampshire look roughly like the America of 1870.
Julián Castro, the former presidential candidate, was right when he called out the Democratic Party’s hypocritical support for the status quo. ‘‘Iowa and New Hampshire are wonderful states with wonderful people,’’ Castro said. But Democrats can’t ‘‘complain about Republicans suppressing the votes of people of color, and then begin our nominating contest in two states that hardly have people of color.’’
In truth, the whiteness of Iowa and New Hampshire matters. Consider that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris were doing as well as Amy Klobuchar in early polls of more diverse states; they led Pete Buttigieg in some polls. But Booker and Harris are finished, in no small part because of their struggles in Iowa and New Hampshire. Klobuchar and Buttigieg still might break out.
Or consider that a candidate with strong white support (like Bernie Sanders) could win both Iowa and New Hampshire this year. That result would create a media narrative about Joe Biden’s campaign being badly wounded, even though Biden leads among two large groups of Democratic voters: African Americans and Latinos. Those voters, however, are told to wait their turn.
Race isn’t the only problem, either. Iowa and New Hampshire are not home to a single city of more than 250,000 people. The two states also have a disproportionately large share of retirees and a smaller share of people in their 20s, 30s and 40s.
It would not be hard to create a fairer system. It could even retain the best aspect of Iowa and New Hampshire: the emphasis on in-person politics that a small state demands.
One or two smaller states could always go first, with the specific states rotating each cycle. (Many smaller states — like Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico and Rhode Island — are diverse.) They could immediately be followed by a couple of larger states that are home to major cities.
Obviously, politicians in Iowa and New Hampshire will fight any such change, as they always have. They’ll use lofty language, about how solemnly they take their responsibilities and how the current system allows the voices of ordinary citizens to be heard. Strip away the rhetoric, though, and their argument comes down to this: We’re better than the rest of you, and we deserve special treatment forever.