No, this post is not about which candidate I believe will actually win Iowa. Rather, it is about how the networks will report the result in Iowa this evening.
As discussed in last week’s post on delegate math, the delegate selection plan for Iowa has the Iowa Democratic Party reporting three separate counts from tonight’s caucuses. And it will be interesting to see how the media treats these numbers in assessing the results.
The first count is the initial preference votes from the precinct caucuses. This vote is the vote that most accurately reflects the support that each candidate has and is the closest thing to the votes in other states (excluding those with ranked-choice voting). In years past, this number has not been available to the media. There are strong arguments for using this number in determining who “won” Iowa.
The second count is the final votes from the precinct caucuses after realignment. This vote is the vote that is most similar to the vote in the handful of states that will be using ranked-choice voting for their primaries (either state-run or party-run). Again, these are real votes from real voters. My hunch is that the media will not use these results in declaring a winner. What the media might use these results for is tracking the flow of second choices and trying to project what will happen in later states as candidates drop out.
The final count is the state-delegate equivalents. This count is the “real” count that determines how many delegates each candidate will receive. Because it is the real count, there is a strong argument for using this count in determining who wins.
My ultimate hunch is that the media will opt for actual votes (as shown by the initial vote count) in determining who wins. The media will use state-delegate equivalents for estimating the delegates won by each campaign in Iowa, but actual votes from voters will count more with reporters than some complicated calculation that only the wonks back in the projection room understand.
Of course, with multiple networks covering the event, there is a real possibility that there will be no consensus on which count to use. Of course, depending on how things develop tonight, the same candidate may prevail on all three counts. However, if the race is close, one candidate could lead on the initial vote but a second candidate prevail after supporters of the trailing candidates have to realign. And, of course, because the weight for each precinct is pre-set and does not matter on turnout, a candidate that does well in low-turnout precincts will have better numbers on the state-delegate equivalent count than he does on the raw vote counts (and a candidate who does better in high turnout precincts may find their results on the raw vote count being better than their results on the state delegate equivalent count).
And this is not just an interesting academic discussion. How the media covers the count matters in the delegate selection process because it is a sequential process. If the media decides that the results make candidate X a contender, candidate X will get a couple of days of positive coverage. If the media decides that the results reveal that candidate Y is having trouble getting votes, candidate Y will get several days of coverage suggesting that his supporters should look for another candidate. And the voters in New Hampshire and later states want to vote for somebody who has a chance at winning the nomination. Thus, historically, how the media has framed the results in Iowa has a positive or negative impact on a candidate’s support in New Hampshire — sometimes allowing a candidate to rise from middle of the pack to first or second in New Hampshire based on a strong showing in Iowa and sometimes causing a leading candidate to face collapsing support in New Hampshire based on a weak showing in Iowa.
