Winter chill could impact Iowa caucuses

Image via AP.

Most Iowans won’t be out Monday night. Never mind that it’s forecast to be well below zero, with wind chills as low as minus 40 degrees, and the roads may still be icy from a set of snowstorms that hammered the state this past week.

It’s because they’re not registered with the Republican Party, which is kicking off the presidential nominating season with its famous caucuses. Or because they don’t want to make the commitment to attend, which involves getting to the nearest of 1,500 caucus sites and sitting in a room — potentially for hours — for the chance to vote on the party’s presidential nominee.

But the winter weather, intimidating even for Iowa, will make an already unrepresentative process even less representative. Elderly Iowans, the backbone of the caucus, are wondering how they will make it to their sites Monday. Political types are mentally downgrading their expected turnout and wondering who a smaller, harder-core electorate will favor.

All this gives longtime critics of the caucus even more reason to be critical.

“This is no way to begin the election of a president,” said Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and federal housing secretary who was a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, when he called for Iowa to have a less prominent role. “You have to be a die-hard who’s willing to trudge through snow and be there for several hours. And if you miss it, your opportunity to vote is gone.”

Democrats already have downgraded Iowa after the state party bungled the vote-counting in the 2020 caucuses. Democrats have relegated the state to later in their nominating process after President Joe Biden declared that he wanted more diverse states that better represent his party and the country to cast the first votes. That party’s process starts in South Carolina on Feb. 3, then moves to Nevada and then New Hampshire.

But Republicans have stuck with Iowa, which once was competitive but has swung firmly to the right in the age of Donald Trump, who carried the state in the general election in 2016 and 2020. Its population is whiter, more rural and evangelical than the nation, but that matches the GOP’s voters better than the Democratic Party’s.

Some Republicans expect a still-robust turnout, but most acknowledge the weather will scare at least some voters away.

“This’ll be worse than we’ve ever had,” said Doug Gross, once a top aide to former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, who said his own 90-year-old mother had decided she couldn’t caucus in these conditions. “It’s going to dampen turnout.”

Brad Anderson, state director of AARP Iowa, said older voters historically decide who wins and loses the contest because “the caucuses do tend to trend older in terms of turnout.”

This caucus might be “somewhat of an outlier,” he said.

The cold and potential snow drifts, especially in rural parts of the state, make conditions “treacherous” for people of all ages, Anderson said. He advised extreme caution, especially for those with mobility issues, and hopes Iowans will take safety into account.

Even under better conditions, only a tiny fraction of Iowans even participate in the caucuses. In 2016, 186,000 votes were cast in the Republican caucus in a state population of more than 3.1 million. And that’s what provides the most important kickoff to the contest to lead a nation of 330 million people.

The caucuses are a relic of the push to reform party nominating processes in the 1970s, freeing them from the influence of party bosses. They helped vault underdogs such as Democrats Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama into the White House.

Caucuses tend to favor movement candidates — liberal Democrats and conservative, increasingly evangelical Republicans — whose supporters are more willing to carve out time on their calendar and dominate the caucus room.

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Republished with permission from The Associated Press.