Had we taken at face value the Iowa poll released “just hours before caucusing” began, according to CNN, we just might have been persuaded that Donald Trump actually was ahead of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and that Bernie Sanders actually enjoyed a “very narrow edge” over Hillary Clinton.
Had we taken at face value the Iowa poll released “just hours before caucusing” began, according to CNN, we just might have been persuaded that Donald Trump actually was ahead of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and that Bernie Sanders actually enjoyed a “very narrow edge” over Hillary Clinton.
As it turned out, Trump, the billionaire reality show personality, was clearly bested by Cruz. And Clinton clung to a minuscule margin over Sanders with nearly all the votes counted.
Now a single caucus, held in a state with a small population, can hardly be viewed today as a harbinger of caucuses and primaries to come. Yet, because the Hawkeye State is first in the nation to award delegates to both Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls, it’s a big deal.
Indeed, it was Barack Obama’s unexpected victory eight years ago in the Iowa Caucus that gave the newby Illinois senator the momentum that ultimately led him all the way to the Democratic presidential nomination over Clinton — the former first lady and former U.S. senator from New York — who was the party’s presumed standard-bearer.
With her razor-thin margin over Sen. Sanders as of press time, Clinton went a long way to exorcising her political demons of 2008. And on the other side of the aisle, Cruz went Holly Holm on The Donald, proving him no more unbeatable than was Ronda Rousey.
That’s not to say that the chalk will prevail in both the Republican and Democratic nominating contests. Indeed, in a CNN/WMUR poll released over the weekend, both Trump and Sanders were out in front in New Hampshire, the next state in which the presidential hopefuls in both parties will vie for delegates.
But Iowa matters a lot, as Nate Silver, the gimlet-eyed psephologist, noted Monday.
Among other reasons, he posited, it affects the tome and volume of media coverage. It generates a “bandwagon effect.” It sends a signal to “party elites and helps them coordinate on a candidate. It winnows the field — as happened Monday with Democrat Martin O’Malley and Republican Mike Huckabee. And it’s a glimpse of whether polls match the reality on the ground.
We’d like to see a robust presidential race in both parties. And Iowa has made for a good start.