Welcome back to the Iowa caucuses — or at least, a version of them.
The caucuses, a contest in which voters gather in local meetings run by their state parties to say who they’d prefer to be their presidential nominee, have been an institution in modern presidential campaigns since the 1970s for Democrats and Republicans.
That’s changing this year with Democrats’ adoption of a new primary calendar that no longer puts Iowa first and rule changes that allow voters to state their presidential preference via a mail-in process.
For Republicans, who are holding their Iowa caucuses on January 15, the caucuses’ significance as the nation’s first presidential contest remains. However, the political circus is already much quieter than in past years in Iowa, where both Democrats and former President Donald Trump have opted not to campaign much, perhaps in part due to President Joe Biden and Trump’s massive leads in the polls. Though things could change again in 2028, the relatively sleepy season suggests that the heyday of the caucuses may be over.
For the last half-century, the caucuses have catapulted candidates to their party’s nomination or even the White House — and doomed candidates who underperform expectations. For the Republicans looking to displace Trump as the decisive GOP frontrunner, a dominant performance in Iowa similarly poses a potential make-or-break opportunity this year. But none of them appear positioned to pull it off.
In many ways, it’s odd that Iowa was ever key to how Americans pick a president, and is even more so now. Iowa is no longer as representative of the nation as it once was, or a swing state, or the home of many deep-pocketed donors. It has only six electoral votes to boot. But because of its time-honored status as the first contest on the presidential nominating calendar and because the media and candidates themselves ascribe meaning to it, it’s become, by default, a major presidential testing ground.
While…
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