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The Iowa caucuses for the 2020 presidential election take place on Monday, and caucusgoers in the state will be the first to have an official say on which candidate they want to represent the Democratic Party.
In a caucus, local members of each political party meet in each of the state's precincts to discuss and determine which candidate they would like to represent their party in the general election. They vote on the candidate they prefer, and the number of votes a candidate receives determines how many delegates will represent them at the party's national convention.
"The Iowa caucuses provide the first solid voting data on popular sentiment in the presidential election cycle," Mack Shelley, the chair of the political science department at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, told Newsweek. "The distribution of votes and turnout levels show which candidates are likely to be able to sustain their campaign beyond Iowa. Historically, the Iowa caucuses produce three 'winners' who did well by 'beating expectations.'"
In an Iowa poll released by Emerson College Sunday, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders leads with 28 percent of support from likely Democratic caucusgoers. He is followed by former Vice President Joe Biden with 21 percent; former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg with 15 percent; Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren with 14 percent; and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar with 11 percent. Trailing behind are Andrew Yang with 5 percent, Tom Steyer with 4 percent, and Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard with 1 percent (The Emerson poll was conducted between January 30 and February 2).
To understand how the Democratic field could change following the results of Monday's caucuses, it might be worth to look at what happened in Iowa four years ago around this time.
Before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, there were 12 major GOP nominees for their party's nomination. In the end, Texas Senator Ted Cruz won, receiving about 6,000 more votes than Donald Trump (51,666 to 45,427) and had eight delegates to Trump's seven. Florida Senator Marco Rubio came in a close third, with 43,165 votes and seven delegates. All other Republican candidates received just one delegate or none at all.
Following their disappointing Iowa results, three GOP candidates—Kentucky Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee—dropped out of the race.
"In 2016, Ted Cruz won the Republican caucuses in Iowa, solidifying his position as a serious candidate," Arthur Sanders, a politics professor at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, told Newsweek. "It also showed that Donald Trump was a candidate who needed to be taken seriously."
In the much-smaller Democratic caucuses, the votes were almost evenly split. Hillary Clinton defeated Senator Bernie Sanders by just four state delegate equivalents—701 to 697—and received 23 delegates to his 21. Clinton would go on to become her party's nominee for president, with Sanders endorsing her in July 2016.
Like what happened to Paul, Santorum and Huckabee, Arthur Sanders explained that some of the candidates in this year's race may feel that they should drop out after this early primary. "After the caucuses some candidates will be in a situation where it is clear they have no path moving forward, so they drop out of the race," he said. "Others will do worse than expected making it difficult for them to raise the money they need to continue campaigning. They too, may drop out, though these candidates sometime stick it out for a bit longer. After Iowa, and then New Hampshire the following week, a clearer picture of the race often develops. Given the large number of candidates running this time, that may take longer this year."
Meanwhile, Shelley noted that it might not be over for candidates who do not perform as well as they would have liked in the caucuses.
"One important point to note is that for the first time, Democratic candidates will have three opportunities to claim victory: the first-round popular vote totals, the post-viability reshuffled vote totals, and the delegate equivalent data," he said. "[T]his makes it likely that more candidates will be able spin their performance positively and live on to fight another day."
