Iowa Dems Say Press Misstating Rural Impact
by Josh Gerstein
Mon, 17 Dec 2007 at 12:38 PM
updated Tue, 18 Dec 2007 at 1:57 AM
With less than three weeks to go to the Iowa caucuses, the state's Democratic Party says prominent members of the national press are misstating the way delegates are allocated and exaggerating the impact of sparsely-populated rural areas.
In its latest issue, touting the possible impact of John Edwards's appeal in Iowa's small towns, Newsweek reported: "Under Iowa's arcane caucus rules, a precinct where 25 people show up to vote gets the same number of delegates as a place that packs in 2,500."
That's a powerful assertion which would surely skew the strategies of not just Mr. Edwards, but also Senators Clinton and Obama. However, according to the state party, it's not true.
"It's not possible," a spokeswoman for the party, Carrie Giddins, told The New York Sun. "It's not statistically possible, if you game out what they said."
The weight of the precincts will track roughly with their population because delegates are allotted based on how many votes Democrats got there in 2004 and 2006. "Precincts that turned out more votes for [the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Senator] Kerry and [Governor] Culver will have more delegates," Ms. Giddins said.
The allocation system does mean that college students who caucus at or near their schools will likely have less impact on the process than those students who caucus in their Iowa hometowns.
In other words, a highly-localized surge for a particular candidate in 2008 will have a limited impact, but it's hard to see how one could win with only small-town support.
A Newsweek editor, Mark Miller, said he was looking into the complaint and would correct the claim if warranted.
What the party termed an "incorrect" suggestion that less-populated towns or precincts are just as important as more densely-settled urban areas was also repeated on
NBC Nightly News Sunday, on MSNBC today, and in a blog posting today by the New York Times.
UPDATE: While the 25-same-as-2500 comparison Newsweek used was off the mark, if the magazine had said 25 caucusgoers in one place might be worth 100 in another, that might have been pretty close to the mark, at least according to this nine-month-old entry on a liberal Iowa blog. The blogger's analysis contends that in 2004 it took almost four times as many caucusgoers to elect a delegate in some counties than others.
Related Topics: Dem Primary
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