Paige Backman
pbackman@uwyo.edu
The 2016 presidential election held its first of the state primary elections and caucuses and UW political science Professor Jim King explained the relevance of them.
The Iowa caucus was held on Feb. 1 and Senator Ted Cruz and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were declared the victors of their respective parties.
Cruz was unable to hold off businessman Donald Trump who won the New Hampshire primary with 10 delegates from the state. Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders came out on top with 15 delegates and Clinton with nine delegates from the state.
The states of Iowa and New Hampshire pride themselves on being the states that “take the temperature” of the election.
“Both Iowa and New Hampshire have provisions in their state law that they are supposed to be first. The political parties don’t have to let this happen,” King said. “They could say, ‘We are not letting anybody start choosing convention delegates.’”
The purpose of the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary is to narrow down the candidates for the conventions of each party to nominate as their candidate for president.
“Some drop out early because they are not able to gain resources,” King said. “We saw after the Iowa caucuses that Paul, Huckabee, Santorum have dropped out.” Chris Christie has announced a suspension in his campaign while Carly Fiorina has officially dropped out of the race post the New Hampshire primary results.
The election’s early stage primaries and caucuses are regarded as initial indicators of how the rest of the election will play out.
“Historically they have been good predictors of the future. Which I find a little frightening that Trump won,” UW graduate student Olivia Spencer said. “But it must be good if the delegates are voting off of what they think the people want.”
Trump’s lack of government experience on his resume is a possible reason for his boost in popularity and in the polls.
“The delegates are people who know what is going on,” Spencer said. “It was a huge margin that he won by. I’ve just been blown away.”
Iowa and New Hampshire are swing states for the 2016 presidential election and the quickly approaching Nevada caucuses also is a swing state and will provide more insight into the popularity of the candidates that will become the nominees for each political party this summer.
