The Daily Background

It had to be said. For all the attention that candidates and the media lavish on folks in Iowa, folks in Iowa really suck at showing up at their caucuses. And when I say they suck at it, I mean they really, really suck at it.

The turnout in the 2004 Iowa caucus was awful. It only amounted to 124,000 people, or only 6% of registered voters in the Hawkeye state.

Now some might try and explain this by noting that the only people really voting were Democrats, since there was an incumbent running for re-election on the Republican side (and thus nothing to really vote for or against). And that’s true, but in 2000, the turnout was much the same. The Boston Globe reported on 1/26/00 (no link, accessed via Lexis Nexis):

In the end, despite the media blitz, just a sliver of Iowa’s 1.8 million registered voters made it to the caucuses Monday night. On the Republican side, fewer than 90,000 of about 600,000 registered voters turned out, the worst showing in at least two decades. Figures for Democrats were not yet available yesterday, but experts said they expected an equally dismal showing.

In fact, only 61,000 Dems showed up, as along with with 86,000 Republicans, giving the total caucus turnout about 147,000, or 7% of voters in Iowa (or 0.00049% of the United States’ population). And that’s really pathetic. And when I say pathetic, I mean really pathetic.

Compare this with the New Hampshire primary, in which 30% of voters turned out in 2004. And in 2000, the last year when when no incumbents ran, a formidable 44% of the eligible pool of registered voters turned out. Heck, 44% turnout in a primary is pretty stellar considering that states like Indiana could only get 54% of their registered voters to turn out for the general election in the same year (PDF source).

So, how many people will vote in 2008’s Iowa caucus? Des Moines Register poll, the most accurate and most respected in the state, predicts that as many as 200,000 voters could show up in the Democratic caucus alone (Republican turnout is expected to be much, much lower).

In response, and probably only because the poll shows them behind Obama by 7%, the Clinton campaign is channeling outright indignation at the idea that as many as 200,000 Iowans might care enough to actually show up for the contest (”The Des Moines Register poll adopts an unprecedented new turnout model for the caucuses,” they moan). With so much at stake and so much importance laid on the Iowa caucuses this year, let’s hope they’re wrong and folks actually bother to show up.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog