Although Clinton was declared the winner of the Iowa Democratic Caucuses, her victory could not have been any closer. Winning the support of 49.9% of Iowa Caucus-goers, she beat Senator Bernie Sanders by a mere 0.3%. Thus, her victory seems to be more of a tie than an actual win, especially considering that Clinton was allocated 22 Democratic delegates while Sanders was given only one less. However, because of Democratic super-delegates, Clinton is currently far ahead of Sanders in terms of the number of delegates that each candidate has. These unelected delegates are establishment Democrats that provide peer review in the nomination process, and the vast majority of them have already pledged their support for Clinton. However, as more primaries and caucuses take place, these super-delegates will soon become negligible, especially since they make up only a small portion of the 4,763 total Democratic delegates.
Although the New York Times argues that Sanders' loss in Iowa is a sign of his campaign's imminent failure, I believe that Clinton's small margin of victory represents the strength of Sanders as a candidate. Only a few months ago, he was an obscure politician whose reputation as a socialist earned him much criticism, but his popularity has grown so much that millions of Americans now align themselves with his unorthodox principles. He came incredibly close to winning a significant election against the Democratic party's most prominent figure, and it seems that New Hampshire will bring similar, possibly more, success for Senator Sanders.
While the true winner of Iowa is difficult to determine, the loser could not be more obvious.
Martin O'Malley, the former Governor of Maryland, brought in a whopping 0.6% of the vote. Not only is this percentage small in and of itself, but it especially dwarfs in comparison to Clinton's and Sanders' figures. As a result, O'Malley has announced that he will suspend his campaign, leaving Sanders and Clinton (the only two legitimate Democratic candidates) to duel over the other 49 states.
What do you think?
Was Clinton's win in Iowa a true victory? Who do you think was the real winner? Who will gain more momentum from their performance in Iowa? Why do you think that Hillary Clinton has earned the support of the vast majority of Democratic super-delegates?
Source:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/01/iowa-caucus-results.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/01/us/iowa-caucus-democratic-precinct-results.html?_r=0
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=iowa%20democratic%20caucus&eob=m.03s0w/D/2/short/m.03s0w/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/upshot/how-the-virtual-tie-in-iowa-helps-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0
13 comments:
I definitely think that although Hillary had a technical victory, Sanders won Iowa. Clinton is an unlikeable candidate. She has become known as untrustworthy through her email scandal and has been known as a flip-flopper on policy issues. Bernie Sanders on the other hand captures people’s hearts with his determination and his expression of his true beliefs. He especially has made an impact on the 17-29 year old age group. I think that after Iowa, Sanders will gain momentum as more people will think of him as a potential winner of the nomination due to his success going up against, moderate-liberal, Hillary.
It has also come up that the race was way too close to be called official. There were many issues on Monday night including inconsistent counting, overwhelmed voters, etc. The Des Moines Register has even called for an audit of the votes at this caucus, and it very well may be possible that Sanders was the true winner. Furthermore, there were multiple coin tosses in the various counties of Iowa and Hillary somehow won all of them. I think this looks suspicious and knowing her history, she cannot be trusted.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/des-moines-register-audit-iowa-results-218731
I agree with athenanz in that Sanders truly won Iowa, and has the momentum after the caucus. He was not expected to come that close to winning Iowa, and the fact that it's possible he actually won is exciting for his campaign. Hilary will probably not have the same luck for the rest of the election (she won all 6 counties that went to coin tosses). I also agree that her winning all the coin tosses definitely seems sketchy, especially with her history. Voters may start to lose what trust they have left in Hilary if Bernie continues his momentum. I feel as if the only thing holding him back is that people did not see him as a viable threat to a name like Hilary Clinton. However, after coming extremely close in Iowa, and now moving onto New Hampshire where he has support, I believe that Sanders will emerge as a worthy opponent of Hilary. A key for him will be the voter turnout of young voters, among whom he has strong support.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/01/iowa-caucus-results.html
I agree with both commenters above. Throughout the entire race so far, Bernie has been behind Hillary by around 30%. Where she is always at 60% and he at 30%, Sanders finally closed the gap between the two. I turned on the TV to watch the caucus and actually gasped at how close they were. What I found to be most interesting about the whole thing is that we know that young voters don't typically show up to primary voting, much less a caucus. Sander's results showed one thing very clearly to me -- that young, college aged students are going to vote this year in the election. We know Sanders' main base is young people and if enough of them showed up to make the results so neck and neck, and that was for something as intense as a caucus, then imaging the young people that will be motivated for Sanders when their states' primary comes around is staggering. I think while Bernie may have lost the caucus, he's shaken up both the voters into action and shaken Hillary into not thinking she has the election in the bag.
I think it's fair to say that Sanders was the real winner in Iowa. Hillary's .3% win in the caucus is basically negligible, especially considering the amount of momentum Sanders had going into the caucus. Sanders' momentum has even now transferred over to New Hampshire, where some polls have him leading by as much as 30 points of Hillary Clinton. Despite all of this, it is rather surprising to see Bernie's rise to the essential top of the Democratic party at this point in time. For so long, Hillary was seen as the front-runner and any kind of momentum that Sanders had gained was written of as 'heat of the moment' type support. One of the most significant figures coming out of the caucus is the fact that 84% of Democratic voters under 30 supported Bernie, by way of the vote. As we have seen, the young population has become rather complacent with politics. If Bernie is able to reinvigorate the young population, it could create a small political revolution in the United States.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2016/02/clinton-claims-narrow-margin-iowa-caucus-160202181810987.html
I think that it is most definitely accurate to say that despite Hillary's official victory, Sanders was the true winner of the Iowa caucus. With a 49.9% lead, she only beat Bernie Sanders by a small .3%, which is a much less meaningful victory than if she were to sweep Iowa. Barely scraping the victory I think has stunted Clinton's momentum, whereas sanders is now full of powerful momentum moving forward into New Hampshire where he is already expected to have a large support group. Sanders was not expected to do nearly as well as he did, and his success has fired back up his campaign and supporters. The opposite effect was had on Hilary's campaign because she was expected by her supporters to do far better than she actually did. I still think that a reason for Hilary's strong support system is that she has an impressive track record and her points have been more solidified than some of her competitors, but i do not think that these reasons will continue to hold up. I think Hilary supporters will start to lose trust in her, as Brian said, and her campaign will fail to be as successful as was expected earlier in the race.
As said in all of the other comments above, Bernie Sanders walks away as the true “winner” of the Iowa caucus. Although Hillary may have officially won this one, Bernie has momentum on his side and based off the recent polling for the New Hampshire primaries, a sizeable victory in the next few days. Bernie Sanders has been closing the gap for several months and it seems that this gap has been completely closed at the perfect time, the start of primary/caucus season. Additionally, although as “King Pash” said a large portion of Sanders supporters are under the age of 30, a large reason for Sander’s success is his growing appeal for people of all ages. Several months ago, many figured that in 2016 nobody from the Democratic party could even challenge Hillary Clinton. Now, it is seeming very likely that Hillary Clinton may once again lose the democratic nomination to a candidate that was originally under the radar.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marco-rubio-and-bernie-sanders-were-the-real-winners-in-iowa/2016/02/02/470947a8-c978-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html
I do not believe that Hillary Clinton's win was a true win, as she would have hoped. She won by such a small amount of votes that her confidence has probably been knocked down quite a bit. Her numbers were even helped out by multiple won coin tosses; she did not even really win by the small margin that the numbers show. I think that Bernie was the true winner because he is gaining so much momentum from this near win. Many voters who ruled him out as a candidate who could never win will be encouraged to vote for him without feeling as if they are wasting their votes. Hillary has probably gained so much support because she is the more moderate of the two leading Democratic candidates. But, Bernie's more extreme ideals are gaining ground and many Americans are realizing his policies' potential. As Olivia mentioned, most of Bernie's supporters are young voters, so if all of them get out to the polls on election day, Bernie could have a chance to win.
I agree with Caitlyn, Clinton's win was not by any means a real win. She won by such a small majority that it really showed how powerful Sanders can be and what a threat he is. I feel that he has always been considered the extreme candidate, which he still is, but no one expected him to actually have a chance at winning. However, now that he did no well in Iowa, I predict that he will majorly pick up popularity around the nation. As Olivia and Caitlyn said most of his supporters are young, and therefore he is drawing in a base of ores who typically do not vote as much, voters tend to be older. This may increase our over all voter turn out. Hillary has always felt safe in this election, this is until now. The only reason she still can feel safe is that she did succeed in winning most of the super delegates, so that will help her a lot. However, after this close close call i predict that Sanders will pick up steam, and that he might as well count this as a win.
I am inclined to disagree with Katie and Caitlyn. There are a number of factors which point to Sanders' long-term weakness as compared to Clinton. For one, Iowa has a progressive tradition, and many citizens of Des Moines and other cities are more inclined to vote for Sanders than urban Democrats elsewhere.
In addition, Clinton spent far less on advertising and general campaigning in Iowa than Sanders did, even with his very active student support. This indicates that Clinton didn't have to "try as hard" to win, and in other primaries she may pull a larger margin of victory.
However, this may all prove to be incorrect. Sanders' rise as a viable candidate has been astounding, going from an Internet 20-something's pipe dream to a width-of-a-hair loss in the first caucus. He may very well turn out to be the frontrunner.
What really matters is how many delegates are assigned to each candidate. Hillary, being the party favorite, is blowing Bernie Sanders out of the water in terms of super-delegate support (362 to 8). Bernie is going to need incredible momentum if he wants to win the support of his party. Or, Hillary needs to show some sort of sign that she is not fit for the general election, which I highly doubt. If Hillary sustains heavy support in South Carolina and Nevada, it doesn't matter how well Sanders does in New Hampshire, Hillary will win the nomination. At this point however, it is all up in the air with who may actually win, but realistically it will be Hillary.
As 2CHAINZ stated, the delegates are the key point to this caucus. It does not matter how close the polls were or how many coin tosses Hillary somehow one, but the delegates that each candidate gets, which turned out to be a tie. I do not believe that Clinton's "win" in Iowa was a true victory. Clinton was heavily favored and the fact that she even tied with Sanders showed the public that Sanders is a real force to be reckoned with. However, Hillary seemingly has a lot more support in the South, which easily could turn out to be Sander's downfall. One thing can be certain however; Martin O'Malley's complete and utter loss.
I believe that without a doubt, Bernie was the real winner from the Iowa caucas. Even though he technically came home with a few less delegates, his showing in the state showed just how powerful he has become against the Clinton machine. Less than a year ago Bernie was barely polling and in the first primary he was neck and neck with Hillary Clinton, one of the most powerful political figures in the United States. Although this win shows that Bernie has more support than originally thought, he will have to do some serious heavy lifting in order to make a difference in this race. Although he came up strong in Iowa, he will have to poll substantially better in some of the big states in order to win the nomination.
I definitely agree with athenaz that Sanders was the true winner of Iowa. For him to be such a strong competitor against Clinton is a win in it of itself. The fact that he could go from an almost unknown politician to getting widespread approval from practically half of the democrats is an commendable accomplishment. What makes this near tie all the more exciting is that it was in Iowa; not even a New England state where Sanders is likely to feel more comfortable. Therefore, it is very possible, if not probable, that Sanders may win against Hillary in the upcoming New Hampshire primary because he will be so close to his home turf of Vermont and will additionally gain supporters after such positive results in Iowa. The hard part for Sanders will come with the super delegates. As El KittyCat pointed out in his post, many of the super delegates have already pledged themselves to Clinton. While the support of these delegates are deserved by Clinton as she is a very experienced and qualified candidate, it puts Sanders at an unfair advantage and may take away from the democratic aspect of the election. This immediate disadvantage is one that Sanders will have to work hard to overcome. I believe that the rest of this race up to the very end may continue in such a neck-and-neck fashion between Sanders and Clinton. It will be interesting to see them face off in desperate attempt to widen the gamp during future debates.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=iowa%20democratic%20caucus&eob=m.03s0w/D/2/short/m.03s0w/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/upshot/how-the-virtual-tie-in-iowa-helps-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0
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