Aftermath of the Iowa Caucuses

I decided to wait a week before I wrote my post-caucus analysis because I wanted to see what the prolonged effects of the Iowa caucuses would be. After the caucuses, four candidates dropped out of the race; while I correctly predicted two of them, the other two came as a complete surprise to me. Also, while I correctly predicted the winner of the Republican caucuses, I was not so lucky when it came to the Democratic caucuses though, which I expected. Here is my analysis below.

For the Republicans, I predicted that Ted Cruz would win Iowa, but I was surprised by how wrong the polls were leading up to the caucuses and how big of a lead Cruz won by. While I predicted that Donald Trump would not be able to rally his supporters to make them come to the caucuses, I was wrong when it came to how bad he would perform because of it; I predicted he would get fourth place while he actually got a very distant second. It is also important to note how well Marco Rubio did even though he finished in third; he outperformed in the state, beating expectation after expectation (including mine), and he almost beat out Trump for second place. Rand Paul under-performed in the state; he was expected to get at least 10,000 votes, but in the end, he only amassed 8,481 votes, which eventually caused him to make a shocking campaign suspension two days later. While I didn't get the order correct after Bush and Fiorina, I did predict correctly that it would be a jumble of non-Rubio establishment candidates and afterthoughts. When the caucuses ended, Mike Huckabee kept his "top three" promise and dropped out of the race. Rick Santorum took a couple days to reevaluate his campaign and decided to end his campaign altogether hours after Rand Paul ended his campaign. 

Last Wednesday, Donald Trump started to tweet that Ted Cruz had cheated his way to win the Iowa caucuses because of a CNN report that said Ben Carson was going to take a break after Iowa. Ted Cruz campaign staffers assumed that this meant he was dropping out, so they told their precinct chairs to tell Carson supporters that their candidate was ending the race and to vote for Ted Cruz instead. While I'm sure a few voters switched from Carson to Cruz, I don't believe that this was the reason that he won. I also believe that this was a genuine mistake on both the Carson and Cruz campaigns; the Carson campaign should have waited until after Iowa to announce this unusual change in plans, and the Cruz campaign should have waited to hear more before they made such a big assumption. I do not believe that any of the campaigns will try to challenge the results because of this. 

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton barely edged out Bernie Sanders by a thin margin of 0.25 points. The race was always expected to be close between these two, but I was not expecting it to be within this close of a margin. I believe this happened because Martin O'Malley's supporters moved to Bernie Sanders after their candidate did not get the 15% to have the viability to keep his votes; this eventually forced O'Malley to suspend his campaign while the votes (delegates) were still being counted. One controversial thing that happened was the fact that a coin toss eventually decided the allocation of state delegates in six precincts because of a tie. I do not agree that this should have been the way to fix this issue, and Bernie Sanders is currently challenging the results because of this, but I do not expect any major changes. 

In summation, Ted Cruz won even though he campaigned against ethanol subsidies, Hillary Clinton won by six coin tosses, and this race is still an unusual one. Nine Republicans and two Democrats remain. The New Hampshire primaries are tomorrow, and I will be posting my predictions for both parties' primaries later today. 

In Liberty,

Jacob Stech '18