Two states that are not representative of the US, particularly in terms of race, have outsize influence in the presidential campaign.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley greets supporters on Jan. 3, 2024, at a bar in Londonderry, N.H.
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Nikki Haley is the latest American female politician to shift her language, depending on whom she is talking to and where. But this tactic has a flip side, prompting criticism of her as inconsistent.
Iowa and New Hampshire have long cemented their status as the first-in-the-nation deciders in presidential nominating contests. This outsized influence has increasingly come under scrutiny.
Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis greets an audience in West Des Moines, Iowa, on caucus night on Jan. 15, 2024.
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In Iowa, the Ron DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down seemed intent on mocking the dividing line federal regulators set between campaigns and the PACs that support them.
Former President Donald Trump speaks in Des Moines, Iowa, shortly after his victory in the Iowa Caucus on Jan. 15, 2024.
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From the ‘static’ polls to Trump’s ‘dissing’ of voters, two political scientists look at the Iowa caucus and see more than just the fact that Trump won it, resoundingly.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appears at a Fox News town hall in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 10, 2024.
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The result confirms the vast majority of Republican voters are still infatuated with the former president, despite his legal troubles and how little campaigning he’s done thus far.
Donald Trump has mounted a major effort to teach people how to caucus for him.
AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File
Donald Trump’s Iowa caucus campaign is very nuts-and-bolts. That may be a recognition that celebrity will only take him so far and attention to traditional political tools might be in his interest.
Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg prepare to caucus for him in a high school gym, Feb. 3, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa.
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The Iowa caucuses have traditionally heralded the start of the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating contest. But the party, eager to maintain the White House, is redesigning that process.
Before the primary, Buttigieg said his campaign had the ‘strongest momentum.’
AP Photo/Mary Altaffer
While much of the focus is on the Iowa result, it is a small, largely white, state – the key results for the presidential nominee will come in on March 3.
Paper ballots – the key to reconstructing what happened in Iowa.
AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar
With electronic voting and vote-counting machines susceptible to hacking, paper ballots ensure recounts are possible – and accurate.
Seth Barnes, a staffer for Democratic presidential hopeful Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, makes calls to potential voters, Jan. 29, 2020.
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What will happen to campaign workers after the Feb. 3 caucuses? It’s a question that’s in the cold Iowa air, carrying with it a subtle message about the state of democratic politics.
Volunteers in Iowa ahead of the Iowa caucus listening to a speaker on Jan. 25, 2020.
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Polls are showing Bernie Sanders leading in next week’s important Iowa caucuses- but polls have been notoriously bad at predicting caucuses’ outcomes.
Like the other Democratic candidates for president, Elizabeth Warren has spent months canvassing Iowa to meet voters while spending little time in other states.
CJ Gunther/EPA
Americans didn’t always have primaries and caucuses to choose presidential candidates. The system was meant to be more democratic, but it places too much attention on largely white, small states.
On Jan. 3, 2012, voters sign in on caucus night at Point of Grace Church in Waukee, Iowa.
AP/Evan Vucci
How did a small, rural state become so influential in the presidential nominating process? A political scientist traces the development of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus.
Strips of native prairie grasses planted on Larry and Margaret Stone’s Iowa farm protect soil, water and wildlife.
Iowa State University/Omar de Kok-Mercado
Investing in farming methods that improve lands and water, and in rural infrastructure and markets, could bring new prosperity to agricultural communities.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley holds a town hall in South Carolina on Aug. 28, 2023.
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While other countries set strict limits on the length of campaigns, American presidential races have become drawn-out, yearslong affairs. It wasn’t always this way.
Trump’s performances never fail to make breaking news, securing him the public’s attention.
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Donald Trump has applied the lessons of winning a TV audience to politics. Much as we might deplore the theatre of entertaining voters, we can’t wish it away.
Professor of Economics and Finance. Director of the Betting Research Unit and the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University