Math 1030: The Iowa Caucuses

By: Brooke T. Smith

Part I:

How does a Caucus differ from a Primary Election? Well, instead of having a populous vote for
each of these candidates on a statewide basis (which is a primary election), the votes determine how
many delegates each candidate will receive for their national convention, which they will then decide
who the candidate will be. Today, Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, North
Dakota, Wyoming, and Iowa are the only states that solely rely on Caucus’.
What makes the Iowa Caucus’ so important, is that Iowa is the first state of fifty to begin casting
ballots since 1972. The state has a complex series of preliminary voting sessions, which is why they
chose to step up and commence the proceedings. Thusly, this is where the voting process starts for the
presidential elections and sets the starting line for a high energy competition in American culture and
tradition. The fact that truly makes the election races even more intense, is the issue of being a “swing
state”, which is identified as a state that has close competitions between the election parties of
Republican and Democratic.
According to an election analytic website ‘FiveThirtyEight’ which identifies the states of
Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin to be swing states. These swing states makes it difficult, if not
impossible, to make a hypothesis on which candidate, let alone party, will win the populous vote. It
could even be argued that these states can make or break the election for either Democratic or
Republican party members.

Part II: Imagine you live in Mason City, Iowa and attend a Republican caucus for Precinct W1-P2 at the
Highland Golf Course. The meeting organizers ask the voters to select their preferences for four
candidates. The following preference schedule summarizes the results of the poll.

• # Voters 19 6 36 39
 1st B R C T
2nd R B R R
3rd
C C B C
4th
T T T B
B is Jeb Bush, C is Ted Cruz, R is Marco Rubio, and T is Donald Trump

Use this preference schedule to answer the following questions about various voting methods.
Vocabulary words in bold are defined in the Voting Theory section in Math in Society .

i. How many people voted? 100 people voted.

ii. Who wins by Plurality Method? Donald Trump, aka “T”.

Part II: (Continued)

iii. Suppose we use Instant Runoff Voting. Remove the candidate with the least 1st Choice
votes and show the preference schedule.

• # Voters 19 6 36 39

1st B R C R
2nd 3rd
R B R C

iv. C C B B

v. Remove the candidate with the least 1st Choice votes and show the preference
schedule.

• # Voters 19 6 36 39

1st R R C R
2nd
C C R C

vi.
vii. Who wins by Instant Runoff Voting? Marco Rubio, aka “R”.
 viii. Calculate a Borda Count for each candidate.

B: 186 C: 272
R: 306 T: 217

ix. Who wins by Borda Count? Ted Cruz, “C”, wins by the Borda Count.

x. How many points does each candidate get using Copeland's Method?

B: 2 C: 1.5
R: 2.5 T: 0

xi. Who wins by Copeland's Method? Marco Rubio, “R”, wins.

xii. Is there a Condorcet Candidate? No, there is no Condorcet Candidate.

xiii. If so, who is the Condorcet Candidate? There is none.

Part III:

If I were a delegate and making my case on which candidate to support based on the Voting
Methods we learned in Module 3 of this course, I would align my personal beliefs of fairness and use
Plurality with Elimination until there are only two candidates left. The winner of the one-on-one will
then be the ultimate winner.

The Plurality Method uses a majority vote to classify options into a list of most desirable, to least
desirable. By then introducing the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives into the mix, the least
desirable option will then be removed from the next round of voting. This way, each vote counts
towards choosing a winner. The only real downside to this method is that it is a lengthy process,
especially when there is more than three or four options to choose between. On a national scale, or even
a state or county scale, this method would take multiple trips from each voter and voter engagement is
abysmally low in the United States to begin with.
Despite these facts, I would still prefer the majority to vote for their leader. That each vote does
count for something.