The Washington Post lets us in on a little secret that is evident…
New Hampshire and Iowa actually have more in common with the GOP than the Democrats demographically….
In plain english?
They are whiter then most of the other Democratic ‘Blue’ states….
The piece points to something that political pundits will NOT acknowledge for the next year…
Democratic votes in those two state have little to do with who will end up being the nominee….
Early votes in California and South Carolina on the other hand WILl probably predict the nominee it would seem…..
Those state represent the parties demographic make-up….
And they are NOT overwhelming left leaning…..
THAT is something to remember with media political editors pushing Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on their front pages….
It is February 2019, less than a year until the Iowa caucuses. As is the norm, Iowa will be the first state to weigh in on the Democratic Party’s presidential nominees next year, according to the primary-tracking website Frontloading HQ. It will be followed, as usual, by New Hampshire (barring some weirdness from New York that the link in the preceding sentence explains).
Why is that important? Because Iowa and New Hampshire have populations that look a lot more like the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. Of the 50 states, Iowa is 39th most like the Democratic Party. New Hampshire is the 44th most like the Democrats. New Hampshire is also the 13th most like the Republican Party in terms of racial composition — and Iowa is the third most similar to the GOP in the country, following only Wyoming and North Dakota.
In other words, the first two states to weigh in on who should be the Democratic nominee — undoubtedly helping narrow down the field of contenders — are states that are more likely to resemble the GOP racially.
That’s not determinative, of course. Democrats are more like Democrats than Republicans, by definition, and it’s mostly Democrats who are voting in these contests. But in 2016, we saw the importance of racial density in determining the party’s nominee. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who had less support with black voters than did Hillary Clinton, won his neighboring state New Hampshire by a wide margin and virtually tied Clinton — the dominating front-runner — in Iowa. He was blown out in South Carolina, though, a state that is the seventh most like the Democratic Party in terms of racial composition.
That’s the good news for the party: South Carolina votes fourth. But first candidates have to get through those first two primaries states that are among the least similar to the Democratic Party in terms of racial/educational composition.
It’s worth noting that the composition of the Democratic Party in a state is probably more diverse than the population on the whole. So a state like North Carolina, which mirrors the party well overall, probably has a more diverse Democratic voting base than the party overall.
That said, Iowa is necessarily fairly unrepresentative of the party simply because the density of whites is so high in the state. Moving the first Democratic primary to a state that’s slightly closer to the party’s demographic might not change the results at all. But the 2016 results suggest that racial differences can make a big difference in the nomination’s outcome…..
Note….
What those two states contests WILL do is knock out a good many lower tier candidates …..
Ones that get single digit numbers in one or both will simply NOT be able to get the money needed to run a national nomination effort….