Iowa Is Closer Than Ever to Losing Its Place
“You play King of the Hill enough times and eventually you get pushed off your perch.”<strong> </strong>
Every few years for the past four decades, Iowa’s prime placement in American politics has come under threat. The arguments against Iowa’s outsize role in choosing each party’s nominee for president are always the same: The state is too white—90.6 percent white, to be exact—making it completely unrepresentative of the American electorate. Caucuses are messy and volunteer-led, meaning that the process is vulnerable to all kinds of problems (see the great caucus disaster of 2020). Plus, it’s cold as hell in February in Iowa, not exactly the weather most conducive to lining up outside middle-school gymnasiums.
Despite this criticism, Iowa has, partly through sheer force
