Why Iowa? Small state has outsize role in picking the president
ANKENY, Iowa — In subzero temperatures, Iowans will gather Monday in churches, high school gyms and community centers to select the GOP presidential candidate they want to be their standard-bearer in November. Once again, a tiny sliver of the American public — a group smaller than the population of Huntington Beach — will create global headlines about the first presidential nominating contest of the year.
Why does Iowa — an agrarian, elderly, overwhelmingly white state with relatively few residents — play such an outsize role in the presidential race? Especially when California is so much more representative of the nation's demographics and future?
Such concerns were not front of mind when the modern
