Iowa voters still weighing which Democrat can beat Trump

IOWA – Dale Todd didn’t plan on being an undecided voter three weeks out from the pivotal Iowa caucuses.

“I’m not one to kick the tires in a car,” said Todd, a Cedar Rapids City Council member. “When I go to a car lot, I buy what I like and I don’t mess around.”

So he committed early to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, just as he had committed early in the 2008 cycle to Barack Obama, and to Hillary Clinton eight years later.

But after Booker dropped out of the race this week, Todd found himself among the majority of Iowans who have not firmly made up their minds on the first nominating contest of the Democratic presidential primary. The presidential campaign season kicked off here more than a year ago, but the sprawling field and a near-paralyzing desire to beat President Donald Trump has left Hawkeye State residents feeling more unsettled than in past elections.

Recent polls point to an unpredictable contest, with little consensus on the likely victor. One survey last week from the Des Moines Register and CNN showed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders atop a tightly clustered pack of contenders, while a Monmouth University poll showed former Vice President Joe Biden out front. Both polls found agreement on one data point: About 60% of Iowa voters say they may change their minds between now and the Feb. 3 caucuses.

“The caucuses are notoriously sort of late-breaking campaigns, so the fact there are still upwards of 60% of voters who say they could change their mind just means the work that goes into identifying voters’ first choices, second choices, third choices in a really fluid and changing field is more important than ever,” said David Kochel, a veteran Iowa GOP operative.

After months of the soft sell, the candidates and their supporters have become notably blunter in their appeals.

“I ask that you support me,” Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said to Iowans at an art museum in Waterloo this month. “I know I’m not in the lead right now, but I’m doing really well. I’m asking you to sign one of those committo-caucus cards. It’s the beginning of the year. Just go out and do it!”

It’s not that voters like Jessalyn Holdcraft are commitment-phobic. Holdcraft, who works in marketing for a nonprofit in Cedar Rapids, was on board with Clinton’s campaign in May 2015, some nine months before caucus night.

“This time was so different,” Holdcraft, 27, said in a Cedar Rapids loft where Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, Calif., had just made a pitch for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “I didn’t have that same loyalty to a campaign. I came in with an open mind.”

And she came in with a plan – a spreadsheet where she ranked the candidates on various criteria, including their positions, their ability to inspire, the quality of their campaign organizers. She crunched the numbers and found that California Sen. Kamala Harris was her best match; Holdcraft settled on committing the week that Harris dropped out of the race.

Now Warren ranks top on her spreadsheet, but Holdcraft hasn’t made a final decision.

“I’ll probably sign a ‘commit to caucus (card)’ before Feb. 3,” she said. “When that is, I don’t know.”

Some Iowa voters say it’s necessary to keep an open mind, given that breaking news can jolt the dynamics of the race. The heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, for example, led to a prolonged discussion of foreign policy in Tuesday’s debate in Des Moines.

Again and again, Iowans point to the same reasons for their slow decision-making: too many choices to sort through and the terror of making the wrong pick.