On the night of February 3, 2020, Democratic voters across the United States looked to Iowa to set the stage for the 2020 Democratic primaries. Iowa has the unique position of being first in the entire primary process, though it does not hold a standard primary election. Instead, a caucus is held: a multi-round election in which voters must physically group together based on which candidate they support. After the initial count is taken, candidate groups that do not meet a 15% threshold are allowed to realign to viable candidates, and supporters of those candidates are encouraged to persuade undecided people to join their group. After this realignment process, the final count is taken, and each candidate’s vote count is put through a mathematical formula by the precinct captain to convert votes to State Delegate Equivalents, or SDEs, per candidate. These SDEs are used to determine the final distribution of national delegates for the state.
The results were expected late that same night. People began to notice something had gone wrong, however, when only 2% of precincts had reported their results after several hours. Reports began to surface about malfunctions with the mobile app designed to report the precinct results to the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP). The app, developed by private company Shadow Inc., was overloaded by the overwhelming traffic generated by the precincts reporting their data all at once. Some observers also showed concern with Shadow Inc.’s connections to former Hillary Clinton staffers and the 2020 Pete Buttegieg campaign. This, along with Buttegieg declaring victory based on 2% of precincts, led to suspicions about the Buttegieg campaign collaborating with the IDP to intentionally delay the release of the results in order to give Buttegieg a larger window of positive media coverage.
This was amplified by the next release of results: results from 62% of precincts were released, still displaying Buttegieg leading Sanders. The Sanders campaign, however, had collected the results of each precinct independently of the IDP, and claimed that 60% of their results had Sanders in a narrow lead over Buttegieg.
After most of the results were released, it became clear that, for a combination of reasons, several precincts had been miscounted and SDEs had been misallocated. In response to this discovery, the Sanders campaign declared victory based on both popular vote and their own SDE count based on districts they corrected. With two candidates declaring victory, DNC national chair Tom Perez stepped in to attempt to sort out the problem. He called for a recanvass, essentially a recount of the entire process, though the IDP denied his request. To add to the controversy, an excerpt from an IDP email circulated, stating “The incorrect math on the Caucus Math Worksheets must not be changed to ensure the integrity of the process.” On February 12, the Iowa Democratic Party’s lead chairman officially resigned.
The only reason that the caucus process was transparent enough to detect the errors is due to the Sanders campaign’s push for more transparency after the close race in Iowa in 2016. This means that the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus may not be a major step toward democratic erosion, but instead it might have simply revealed a facet of democracy that had secretly eroded long ago, only now brought to light.
Regardless, the events in the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus are indicative of democratic erosion in the United States. At its core, the crisis over miscounted districts is directly in opposition to the definition of democracy laid out in Robert Dahl’s Polyarchy, in which he states that “the key characteristic of a democracy is the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals.” [1] By refusing to fix the miscounted districts, an unknown number of voters have been disenfranchised, thus eliminating their ability to be regarded as political equals to their opponents. Furthermore, In The Civic Culture by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, they argue that a major facet of democracy is that voters place their trust in the political elites to rule in a manner that is fair and cooperative [2]. The involvement of the Buttegieg campaign in funding Shadow, Inc. destroys the trust placed in the Iowa Democratic Party to hold fair elections, thus violating this principle. It could also be argued that Buttegieg’s declaration of victory before the results had come in was in violation of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s concept of the norm of “forbearance”, in which it is accepted that politicians do not necessarily exercise all of their power, even if legal. It’s an accepted norm that people should typically declare victory once there is evidence to back up that claim, so Buttegieg’s declaration of victory was in violation of the principle of forbearance. [3]
- Dahl, Robert. 1972. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Almond, Gabriel & Verba, Sidney. 1963. The Civic Culture Book. SAGE Publications.
- Levitsky, Steven & Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown. Chapter 1.
With the chaos of the Iowa caucus bringing to light a real problem with how the US carries out its primaries, I think that if anything, the Iowa caucus has only harmed the people’s trust in the system. Sanders didn’t help either by undermining the IDP and publishing his own results which shows a much larger lead than he had. With many people in his campaign in addition to his supporters sounding the corruption alarm, it’s really hard to see how we can expect to go forward if the only way a contest is legitimate is if your candidate wins.
For decades, the Iowa Caucus has been uncontested in its important role in the Democratic primaries, launching the campaign success of many presidential hopefuls like Barack Obama in 2008. However this changed with the logistical nightmare that was 2020 Iowa Caucus, where precinct chairs struggled with the polling apps, successes were reported too early, and the integrity of the whole process was challenged. The ultimate failure of the Iowa Caucus left many people questioning the effectiveness of caucuses in our primary system in the United States. The Iowa Caucus is one of many probable indicators of democratic backsliding in the U.S., with its spread of misinformation, the curious nature of our election infrastructure, and the growing distrust in the establishment politicians.
The Iowa Caucus is the first of all the democratic primaries, and while the state does not have a large number of delegates at the Democratic National Convention, it was known in the past to be a key moment for democratic candidates, as it can solidify an early lead. However, this was not the case in 2020, as the whole day was riddled in error. The voting app used by precinct chairs to report their regional caucus results to the state caucus was overloaded with the number of users reporting at once, and many chairs struggled with the technology itself. When they turned to their back-up option of the telephone lines, there was even more difficulty reporting results as the Iowa Democratic headquarters lines were backed-up. These were just some of the major inconsistencies in the reporting that night in Iowa, which led to the further release of false information. Candidates like Buttigieg and Sanders claimed their victory prior to the completion of the process, adding to the confusion. While the results are still unclear even weeks later, as of February 18th, Sanders and Buttigieg share roughly the same amount of delegates from Iowa, even though Sanders has received a slightly higher popular vote.
The fact that an important state-wide caucus has still yet to give any semblance of a definitive answer has led to the spread of misinformation, a facet of democratic erosion. In Dahl’s Polyarchy, he claims that democracy must be responsive to its citizens that are political equals. Nothing about the Iowa caucus and its results were responsive. The unclear results that have taken weeks to come in are indicators of the government’s inability to provide speedy accurate information to the public. This detail shows that our political institutions have failed to maintain the purpose of democracy described by Dahl. This instance is an example of the decay of democracy, and a contributor to democratic backsliding in the U.S.
This spread of false information can also be attributed to media outlets and candidates in addition to the Iowa Democratic Party. Political scientists like Nancy Bermeo discuss how the free media has led to a lack of accountability in the governments of liberal democracies and this situation only exemplifies that theory. Candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders misunderstood the results but were able to make claims of victory before all caucuses reported back. Because of social media and the free press in the United States, these messages were able to spread fast, even though they were inaccurate. While I am not arguing for a more restricted press, I am simply claiming that issues like the one in Iowa can occur because our media sources are becoming more free and accessible as we move further into the 21st century.
When we truly step back and evaluate our election system, it’s easy to see how our primaries and caucuses, in general, can cause democratic backsliding. Caucuses themselves are inherently very different from any other type of voting we do in the United States since it operates similarly to an open forum where people cast their ballots. This process is very unorganized and with Iowa’s difficulties to report accurately, it can make you wonder why we vote on the party candidates in the first place. Scholars like Levitsky and Zieblatt argue that our democracy has become too open and that parties need to “gate-keep” and control who their party’s presidential candidate will be. I don’t necessarily agree that we should have a more closed democracy, the lack of accuracy in election results is certainly supportive of this idea, which was initially proposed by Levitsky and Zieblatt to prevent democratic erosion.
The Iowa Caucus is an example of why we must be extra cautious with all of our elections to avoid democratic backsliding. The spread of misinformation from the Iowa Democratic Caucus and the media, as well as how our primary system is organized all are indicative of the democratic backsliding in the U.S.. This culmination of events contributes to the overall distrust in the public towards the government and our political institutions, which only furthers democratic erosion.
Dahl, Robert. 1972. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Bermeo, Nancy. On Democratic Backsliding. Journal of Democracy, Volume 27, Number 1, January 2016, pp. 5-19 (Article). Johns Hopkins University Press.
Levitsky, Steven & Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.