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CONTACT: Brian McNeill
University Public Affairs
Phone: 804-827-0889
Email: bwmcneill@vcu.edu

On Monday, the 2016 presidential campaign marked an important and perhaps telling milestone with the Iowa caucuses, the first of the statewide electoral events used to determine the party nominees for the U.S. presidency. Sen. Ted Cruz was the surprise winner in the Republican caucus, defeating national front-runner Donald Trump, while Sen. Hillary Clinton was projected to be a narrow winner over Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race. The New Hampshire primary, which will be held Feb. 9, is next on the candidates’ calendar.

Deirdre M. Condit, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of political science in the College of Humanities and Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University, offers her analysis below of the Iowa caucus results and what they say about the campaign ahead.

Republicans showed up at the Iowa caucuses in record numbers. Though Democrats didn’t top their 2008 turnout numbers, they also had an impressive number of caucus-goers last night. Much will be written about the 2016 opening of the election, but there are several important things to note.

First, while the media has billed this as the “year of the outsider,” if we look at the outcome on the Republican side, among all of the candidates, three sitting senators (Cruz, Rubio, Paul), garnered 53 percent of the votes. On the Democratic side, while the menu of choice was considerably more narrow, just under 50 percent of Democrats also chose a long-term sitting senator. While Bernie Sanders has worked to brand himself as an outsider, holding a seat in the U.S. Congress for more than 25 years doesn’t exactly qualify him as an outsider to Washington politics. Add in Hillary Clinton’s long and diverse experience in public life and it seems Iowans opted for what we political scientists would call “quality” candidates over outsiders or those without Washington experience.

Second, the strong showing by both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in Iowa exposes what many have suspected is the limited reach of Donald Trump’s appeal to many conservative and evangelical voters in the Republican party. Cruz’s savvy and well-executed ground game should be credited with his winning results; in Iowa, political organization prevailed. Of the two, Rubio is probably the bigger threat to the eventual nominee for the Democrats, as a Rubio ticket tilts Florida toward the Republican column for the Electoral College.

If Trump doesn’t win in New Hampshire, where he is as close to a favorite son as can be found among the GOP field (except perhaps Chris Christie), it is hard to imagine how he regains his front-runner status. After New Hampshire, Republicans in Nevada and South Carolina will have to decide whether they are persuaded by Cruz’s tight organization, Trump’s “outsider” disdain for traditional politics or Rubio’s near ingénue status.

For the Democrats, while Bernie Sanders had a great showing in Iowa, and should win New Hampshire as the favorite son in that race, his supporters’ demographics don’t bode well after next week’s primary.  Sanders won white voters who identify as “very liberal,” but he split the vote of white voters who identify as “moderate” liberals. Across the country, a greater percentage of Democrats say they are “somewhat” or “moderately” liberal than identify as “very liberal” at the polls. Unless he can find a way to appeal to non-white Democrats, after New Hampshire, it is difficult to see how Sanders takes the lead over Hillary Clinton in Nevada and South Carolina immediately thereafter.

The striking thing about that contest is the explicit dynamics of intersectional identity politics. Unlike the Republican contest, where voters are demographically more alike than distinct, candidates in the Democratic Party increasingly vie for voters whose identity politics are deeply nuanced and complex. As was the case during the primary run up to the 2008 election, how Democrats vote will be strongly determined by the amalgam of their individual race, ethnicity, age, sex, sexual orientation, economic status, education and prior voting experience.

Unlike the Republican contest, where voters are demographically more alike than distinct, candidates in the Democratic Party increasingly vie for voters whose identity politics are deeply nuanced and complex. 

Sanders will need to reach effectively beyond his key demographic support – white, very liberal voters, if he is to win the Democratic nomination. While the mostly white caucus-goers strongly identified as very liberal in Iowa yesterday, across the country, fewer Democrats define themselves that way. This should give Hillary Clinton a significant advantage after New Hampshire.

The gender vote on the Democratic side needs consideration. While young Democrats are perhaps predictably drawn to Sanders’ rhetoric of “revolution,” what most pundits have trouble understanding is his appeal to young women, particularly when they could choose to support the first-ever woman to lead a major party ticket in a presidential election. On the women’s side, the gender gap seems to break at about the 30ish year of life. In an odd way, this is a testament to the successes of women like Hillary Clinton, whose lives have been devoted to shattering the layers of glass that historically blocked the opportunities of their grandmothers, their mothers, and themselves.

While young women today are the beneficiaries of those endless battles for equality and opportunity, that history remains mostly opaque to them. Perhaps it’s only when they begin to encounter those remaining barriers themselves that the need to pick up a sledgehammer becomes real. It is inconceivable to them that a woman won’t be president in their lifetimes and so this woman isn’t of particular importance. What does matter to them is the question of their own economic stability in the years to come. Bernie Sanders’ promise to bring about an income revolution has much more appeal.

The most interesting group of voters for me to watch this year will be women of color. In 2008, African-American women had the most difficult of decisions to make as voters: support the first viable African-American or the first viable woman during the primaries? This was not an easy decision for many. Once the party had chosen its candidate, however, African-American women voters were all in and turned out in impressive numbers to elect Obama president.

Nearly eight years of an Obama presidency has revealed many bitter lessons to many of those women, however. Despite his best efforts, having a black man in the White House did not “end” racism in America. Indeed, many would argue that over the course of his presidency, life for many African-Americans actually got worse – as the rise of Black Lives Matter suggests. The Right’s steadfast opposition to Obama’s presidency has been read by many as simply more evidence of the perdurability of racism. For African-Americans, breaking that particular glass ceiling brought no panacea.  

How will African-American women respond – faced once again with the same opportunity – to see a woman bust through the ceiling that has long kept women out of the Oval Office? Will they say, “once more into the breach!” and turn out with enthusiasm and numbers for Hillary? Or will they shake their heads and say, “Why bother? If she wins, they will find other ways to stop her, just as they did Barack?” In 2016, Hispanic women and Latinas may be in a similar position should the final pairing be either Cruz or Rubio against Clinton. In the game of American electoral politics, women of color hold an amazing amount of power – despite the fact that most pundits overlook that reality. How they decide to use it this year may well determine the future of American governance, at least for the next four years. 

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