The EconomistDecember 14th 2019 291“I
t’s a kindastrange thing to do to your
life. I’m trying to pace myself,” says
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, In-
diana. He has spent much of the past year
criss-crossing Iowa, eating his body-
weight in corn, shaking hands in coffee
shops, spelling out his centre-left ideas.
His bet is that getting a victory in the
opening contest of the Democratic primary
would propel him to be the party front-run-
ner nationally. Over the past month polls in
the state have shown he has emerged as the
front-runner there with 25% support,
nudging past Elizabeth Warren, although
in national polls Joe Biden remains the
most popular. That is what underpins the
current Buttigieg bounce in political pun-
ditry. Of the 17 contested caucuses (in both
parties) since Iowa set up its current sys-
tem in 1976, victors on ten occasions went
on to become their party nominee. For
Democratic candidates recent odds are
even more alluring: not since Bill Clinton,
in 1992, has anyone become the nominee
without coming first in Iowa.
On February 3rd Democratic caucus-go-ers will congregate in 1,681 schoolhouses,
barns and other forums, one for each pre-
cinct in the state. Candidates who receive
fewer than 15% of the votes in each caucus
will be knocked out and their support re-
distributed. Caucus-goers are older, whiter
and more rural than the electorate as a
whole. This tends to work against non-
white candidates—with Barack Obama,
who won Iowa, the only exception to this
pattern. In some ways, then, the system
seems rather retrograde. Yet the way votes
from less popular candidates are redistrib-
uted is similar to a voting system that elec-
toral reformers favour as a way to encour-age moderation and compromise, making
the caucuses rather forward-thinking. The
other paradox of Iowa is that though the
caucuses are supposedly all about folksy
interactions with voters, all that meeting
and greeting costs a lot of money.
Cash and caucuses go together better
than they may seem to. Steve Forbes, a ty-
coon, showed in 2000 that by spending
$2m on a lavish campaign in Iowa he could
draw plenty of attention and support. He
came second to George W. Bush in the Re-
publican caucus that year, a decent result
for a political outsider. The cash buys local
television ads. An estimate by FiveThir-
tyEight, a data-journalism site, suggests Mr
Buttigieg has already spent $2.9m on tele-
vision ads in Iowa, more than anyone else
(and far more than he has spent anywhere
else). Bernie Sanders is only slightly less
lavish a spender. The likes of Mr Biden, Ms
Warren and Amy Klobuchar are, for now,
far behind on ad buys.
This blitz has helped make Mr Buttigieg
famous in Iowa. On a recent wintry week-
day night he addressed 2,000 cheering
people in a school auditorium in Council
Bluffs. On the same night, in more-popu-
lous Des Moines, Ms Warren drew barely- A day later, in northern Iowa, Amy
Klobuchar braved a blizzard to address a
couple of dozen in a supporter’s living
room. At recent events in western Iowa, a
more conservative part of the state, Mr But-
tigieg spoke frequently of his faith, mar-
riage (to a man, though few seemed to
The Democratic primaryHow to win in Iowa
COUNCIL BLUFFS
It helps to press plenty of flesh—but also to spend a lot of moneyUnited States
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