Okay, I'm calling this thing.
It is Wednesday, February 5th, 2020. The Iowa Caucuses were 2000 years ago today. They have counted 83% of the votes but they're apparently too tired to use Excel over there so they've had to revise the latest estimate at least twice. The Needle claims to have a result, but I will
not worship at that dark altar.
Thus, the results are: for the first time ever, the Iowa Democratic primary has
lost the Iowa Caucuses! Nobody won!
A warbling rendition of Hail to the Chief begins playing on kazoos. All-white balloons drift down from the ceiling. Confetti is fired out of cannons, but it's all wet. One of the balloons pops. It is filled with spiders. Guy Fieri is there for some reason, eating an ear of corn as long as his arm, smothered in donkey sauce.
Knew I shouldn't have let those fuckers organize the festivities.
Anyway, speaking slightly more seriously for a moment, it looks like Pete might pull this out, but the whole thing got so thoroughly fucked up by AppGate that it really truly doesn't matter much any more. Just a tiny rural state that split its delegates 4 different ways. To the 15 brave users who read 538, come forward and collect your prize.
(It's one of the spider balloons)
A lot of people have asked why this happened. The long and short of it is: money, for both the fuckery of the caucuses and the fuckery of the app. This app was essentially a paid side project for a company called Shadow, Inc. Which is a terrible name for an election tools firm, but hey, tech bros are nothing if not terrible at naming things. Shadow, it's worth noting, is (or was) fairly well regarded as a technology firm catering to Democratic campaigns and activists. They've built a number of useful tools in the past. However, because of the way campaign finance works in the US, companies like Shadow make ends meet by taking on tiny jobs on everything they can get. The Iowa and Nevada Democratic parties each paid around 50-60k to Shadow for them to develop a tool for caucus reporting, which is a terrible idea from the jump, and Shadow took the job, because apparently they're that hard up for cash. For those of you who do technology work, that might look like a very small number for a job like this. You would be right.
The Iowa Caucuses are the way they are because a) caucuses are mostly free to run, since they're organized almost entirely by volunteers who then screw things up and b) New Hampshire has made it legally impossible for them to
not be the first primary in the nation. If another state moves in front of NH, the state party is legally bound to advance in front of them. So if Iowa switched over to a primary from a caucus, they would lose their first-in-the-nation status. Which is valuable if you care about campaigns spending money in the state, sure, but the real gain is in legislation. This prime position is why we've got corn syrup in fucking everything and why politicians were briefly super enthusiastic about Ethanol and now it's in all the gas - making it so that every presidential hopeful in the nation has to campaign in Iowa (and campaign
hard) has created enormous pressure to cater to Iowa specific interests. So they've got a lot hanging on being in front of NH, which means being a caucus instead of a primary. It's a mess. It's always been a mess. This is just the first time it has been so
publicly a mess. Still, remember, could be worse.
Now, on to NH! The OP (which I'm sure everybody read) has this to say on the subject of the Granite State Primary:
Wow, I feel bad about dunking on the NH Democratic party now. Turns out Iowa really ain't shit.
Anyway, highlights from the upcoming few days include candidates awkwardly standing inside total strangers' living rooms, lots of weird photos of people shoving breakfast food and crabcakes (hopefully not at once) into their mouths, and the knives coming out as people no long have to worry about appealing to Iowa Nice second-alignment caucusgoers. There's also a town in the state that all gets together at midnight at votes all at once by dropping their votes in a box. Rural American, everybody!
Next poll is who you think will win the NH Primary. In the interest of covering our bases, there will be a "nobody" option this time.
