I’m not sure exactly what I expected from my first time covering the Iowa caucuses. As a nerdy middle-schooler growing up in the D.C. suburbs, I had read some American history, so I knew a little about this first step for voters in a presidential election year. Having also consumed lots of inside-the-beltway political news, I expected a frenzy of events swarming with campaign staff and press.
It wasn’t like that at all. Because of the weather and the tiny field of candidates, the week leading up to the Jan. 15 caucuses offered few campaign events. Donald Trump didn’t even arrive in Iowa until Friday night; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, both trailing Trump in Iowa by at least 30 points, succumbed to the snow and cold and canceled events.
Press people often outnumbered voters, so scrums formed around them rather than around politicians. Perhaps the cold was a deterrent, or perhaps voters were just feeling apathetic faced with a repeat of the 2020 election, as many wearily told me in interviews.
The bad weather offered reporters apt analogies. Their dispatches described a “frozen race” and candidates following “an icy path.” In our hotel lobby in Des Moines, which was packed with campaign staffers and journalists, veterans of both groups told me the same thing time and again: “This is really weird.”
On the night of the 15th, I set up camp at a West Des Moines caucus site where, again, at least for a while, reporters outnumbered voters. I was relieved when people gradually trickled in to fill the 130 chairs.
Voters had to check in at their precincts (there are 1,670 in Iowa) by 6:30 p.m. The caucuses began at 7, and the one I observed kicked off with a prayer. Each candidate’s name was called, and three minutes were allotted for speeches. One by one, supporters pitched their candidates.
Voters wrote their picks on blank ballots and deposited them in a paper bag that was passed around the room. Because voter turnout for the general election is predicted to be low, it was subtly reassuring to see democracy in action as these people cast their votes.
The ballots were quickly tallied, and the results called out: Trump had 42 votes, DeSantis had 31, Haley had 25, and a handful of votes went to others.
That moment felt underwhelming to me. Sometime during the speeches and before the voting, news outlets had already called the winner: Trump. As the horde of reporters scanned their phones for details, the roomful of Iowans who were about to vote did not appear to have seen the news.
Though the actual caucuses felt like a foregone conclusion, my interviews with Iowans were thought-provoking. One I’m still mulling occurred while I waited out the weather at the only diner open in Atlantic, a town of 6,700 about 80 miles west of Des Moines. There I got to know Dale Wright, a Vietnam veteran, father of four, and grand- and great-grandfather of “about 25,” who told me he still misses his wife, who died five years ago. Wright doesn’t ever caucus; in fact, he rarely votes at all. But there are clearly people and things he cares a lot about.
Wright thinks Nikki Haley could make a good president. “It’s about time we had a female president,” he said. He paused when I asked what issues are at the top of his mind. “School shootings,” he said, after a moment. “There just has to be something we can do.”
This nonvoter isn’t so unlike a voter, it turns out. Wright’s opinions and values, while they may not translate into marks on a ballot, certainly translate into acts in his community. “If I can help someone,” Wright told me, “I do.”
Much has been written of the people, like Wright, who didn’t turn out and of the fact that this year’s caucuses had the fewest voters since 2000. But I was also struck by the people who did brave the cold to vote — a simple, unglamorous, yet critical action. And I noticed the equalizing nature of a caucus, too, drawing hyperpolitical voters decked out in campaign garb and weary, vaguely interested voters alike. When the ballots are tallied, the votes of both count equally.
Sophie Hills, a 2021 summer fellow for the Independent, is a staff reporter for the Christian Science Monitor.
