About 100% of Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats who caucus or vote in the primaries will choose a white candidate next month. That’s quite an outcome for the much vaunted “most racially diverse field ever.”
Why? Sometimes, the media likes to blame the whiteness of the early states. The New York Times explained that “some of the problem is structural: Iowa and New Hampshire — two of the whitest states in the country — play an outsize role … ” in the whole process.
Julian Castro, a Hispanic candidate who just dropped out on Thursday morning, has suggested that Iowa’s whiteness has harmed candidates of color. But this explanation runs into one very uncomfortable fact: A clear majority of Iowa Republicans in 2016 caucused for candidates of color. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson pulled in a combined 112,000 votes out of the 187,000 caucus votes cast. That’s 60% of all votes going to black or Hispanic candidates.
Compare that to the Democrats’ famously diverse field this year, which didn’t even make it to Iowa.
Kamala Harris and Julian Castro have dropped out. Cory Booker is polling around 3% in Iowa. Since Iowa Democrats have a viability threshold, where a candidate needs at least 15% in a precinct to get any delegates, there’s a decent chance Booker will post a 0% in the Hawkeye State, and he’s polling around 1% or 2% in New Hampshire.
Andrew Yang’s numbers aren’t much better.
Thanks to the Republican 2016 results, and the fact that Obama won Iowa back in 2008, nobody can say with a straight face that the whiteness of Iowa sinks nonwhite candidates. Looking down the road to South Carolina, where a majority of the Democratic electorate was black last time, the very white Joe Biden of Delaware has been dominant. In fact, Kamala Harris never led Biden in a South Carolina poll, judging by FiveThirtyEight’s numbers.
Democrats and the left-leaning media love to count heads and make racial quotas. How many minorities are in each party in Congress? How many speakers of color have graced a podium at a conference? And so on.
Iowa this year will provide quite the contrast: While three candidates of color got 60% of the GOP caucus last time, the remaining two candidates of color will get about 0% of the Democratic caucus this time.
Democrats, who think these head counts really matter, need to keep searching for an answer.
