{"id":53006,"date":"2020-02-05T11:30:14","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=53006"},"modified":"2020-02-05T11:30:15","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:30:15","slug":"does-the-iowa-caucus-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=53006","title":{"rendered":"Does the Iowa Caucus Matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>BY CORIE LYNN<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Feb. 3, Democrats across Iowa moved about their local caucusing locations, preparing to vote in the first primary of the 2020 Presidential Election. After a day\u2019s delay, polling locations began reporting results.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As of the morning of Feb. 5, 71% of precincts reported their results, showing Pete Buttigieg with 26.8%, only 1.6 points ahead of Bernie Sanders. Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden followed with 18.4% and 15.4% respectively, while Amy Klobuchar received 12.6%.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With November still months away, some might wonder why these results\u30fcor the caucus as a whole\u30fcmatter. According to Dr. Larry Gould, Chair of FHSU\u2019s Political Science Department, the Iowa primary matters because of its representation of American democracy.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c[People should have] some interest in the function\u30fclike voting\u30fcfor it to work properly,\u201d Dr. Gould said.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also explained that Democrats and Republicans chose Iowa to be the first state with formal influence on presidential elections. Following the results of the state\u2019s primary is thus essential to understanding the electoral process.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Gould also pointed out that FHSU students, too, should understand the Iowa caucus because they won\u2019t always live in Kansas.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOur students need to know the different things used,\u201d he said.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Iowa Republicans, for instance, use a secret ballot for their caucus. Iowa Democrats, on the other hand, vote publicly by gathering in areas designated to their preferred candidate. If that candidate does not reach the necessary 15% in the initial count, supporters then disperse to represent a candidate that meets that support requirement.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Monday\u2019s primary, however, looked different than in the past, as Democrats added an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2020\/02\/04\/802583844\/what-we-know-about-the-app-that-delayed-iowas-caucus-results\">app<\/a> to the caucusing process. Instead of expediting the caucusing process, it instead glitched, resulting in the delay in result reporting.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Gould noted that the confusion resulting from Monday\u2019s caucus displays a contrast between technology and tradition, Americans wanting fast information yet continuing old processes. Voters saw the two butt heads when the app failed to do its job.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He then explained that this year\u2019s caucus will likely only fuel an ongoing debate regarding the Iowa caucus.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At present, there is \u201ca lot of consideration of doing away with Iowa [as the first primary],\u201d Dr. Gould said. He went on to explain that, as the state has a largely white population, it does not represent America or American voters as a whole, nor political leanings in an election.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even with the controversy\u30fcor, perhaps, because of the controversy\u30fcregarding, the necessity for the caucus, the nation\u2019s eyes are on Iowa. Whether the state\u2019s results hold true for the impending election, caucuses remain important that national voters, including those in Hays, pay attention to this part of democracy in order to better participate in it.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY CORIE LYNN On Feb. 3, Democrats across Iowa moved about their local caucusing locations, preparing to vote in the first primary of the 2020&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":53007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,11],"tags":[13548,7702,11974,5051,69,106,13545,13547,751,13546,13549,290],"class_list":["post-53006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-area-news","category-news","tag-amy-klobuchar","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-corie-lynn","tag-elizabeth-warren","tag-fhsu","tag-fort-hays-state-university","tag-iowa-caucus","tag-joe-biden","tag-larry-gould","tag-pete-buttigieg","tag-political-science-department","tag-tmn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/My-Post-8.png?fit=1199%2C628&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53008,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53006\/revisions\/53008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}