US election: fear, loathing and bean counting in Iowa

Bernie Sanders's coffee jar runneth over. Such is the support here in Iowa City for the socialist senator's come-from-behind bid to run for the US presidency that Dave Panther has had to add a second Sanders jar to his coffee-bean caucus. Panther, the owner of the town's Hamburg Inn No 2, has been running the caucus, in which customers drop a bean into the jar of their favoured candidate, since another insurgent, Howard Dean in 2004, looked as if he might upset the Democratic establishment.

Panther's diner has been a popular stop for candidates looking to pump arms and win votes in the first state in the country to cast ballots in the presidential process. Photographs of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama hang on the walls. A table in the corner is dedicated to Ronald Reagan, who dined here in 1992 and liked the meatloaf. In 2008 Bill Clinton dropped a bean in his wife's jar and Obama put one in his own. On caucus day – this year's is on Monday – the inn counts the beans and declares a winner.

The bean ballot is different from the way voting works in Iowa’s real caucuses. The high-profile events are a chance for groups of voters to meet, listen to each other and to campaign pitches, and consider among themselves who they might back. Then they vote for whichever candidate they would like to see win their party’s nomination to run for the White House.

It will all happen over the course of about an hour on Monday evening, kickstarting a campaign marathon that will culminate on November 8th, when the United States chooses President Obama's successor.

"This year Bernie Sanders is leading with the Democrats, but Hillary Clinton is running very strongly too," Panther says, sitting in front of bean jars adorned with the red and blue ribbons of the parties. "Donald Trump is running ahead for the Republicans, but Ted Cruz is very strong."

Two-jar tally

Sanders’s two-jar tally is down to this part of Iowa, Johnston County, being a deep pool of liberal blue in what is a rural state in the heart of the US. The independent senator for Vermont plays well among the progressive types at the University of Iowa here in Iowa City. They are fired up by Sanders’s populist preaching against economic inequality, Wall Street and “corrupt” campaign finance.

Much as Trump, the businessman who has become the Republican frontrunner, has tapped the anger of mostly white blue-collar men to the right, Sanders, another anti-establishment figure, has harnessed the frustration of the left – predominantly among young voters who feel that the economic and political status quo has given them a raw deal.

A few kilometres from the Hamburg Inn the anger is palpable. Outside a Trump campaign rally at the university, on a freezing Tuesday night, about 50 protesters hold “Dump Trump” and “Unite Us, Don’t Divide Us” signs, and chant “You’re Fired! You’re Fired.”

This very vocal show of anger is directed at the property and entertainment mogul whose Islamophobic, anti-immigrant campaign and rage-against-the-machine rhetoric have triggered a groundswell of support and opposition.

Trump, the man who wants to put up walls but is unwilling to be fenced in on any issue, has broken all the traditional campaign rules, something that appeals to a large bloc of Republicans who are frustrated with the dysfunctional nature of Washington politics.

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose voters,” Trump said last week of his followers.

This week he even took on Fox News, the flagship of the conservative media, by refusing to participate in its debate on Thursday in a row about his treatment by its moderator, Megyn Kelly. Trump again dominated the news cycle, but this time at a critical stage in the race.

Just metres from the protesters at the University of Iowa a man sells Trump paraphernalia. “Bomb the Shit Out of Isis badges,” he shouts, touting his wares. The badges, capturing one of Trump’s more outrageous remarks, are a big seller. “Thank you, ma’am, enjoy the show,” the vender tells a customer in the long queue to the rally.

Capacity

Inside, the university gymnasium is filled to capacity.

“We need a change in Washington,” says Gary Kellogg, who is 76, explaining why he plans to caucus for the businessman. He is holding a sign saying “The Silent Majority Stands with Trump”.

“He isn’t owned by anyone,” says Mike Barnes, a 43-year-old car salesman from Cedar Rapids, discussing why he likes him. “He is not a politician; he is a businessman, and we need the country to be run like a business.”

During his 30-minute speech Trump plays the crowd like a consummate entertainer, with stinging one-liners and pithy putdowns of his rival candidates, a skill honed on his reality-TV series, The Apprentice. Trump shows why is far from an apprentice in the business of running for president. The show could soon be The Nominee.

Reflecting the divisions that Trump has stirred, the rally is interrupted several times by shouting and whistling protesters.

“Am I allowed to rip that whistle out of her mouth? I would . . .” Trump says after his monologue is interrupted again. On this campaign trail there is plenty of fear and an awful lot of loathing.

“I am here to speak out, so I can look my kids in the eye and say, ‘I spoke out,’ ” says Jenifer Angerer, a 50-year-old peaceful protester from Iowa City. She has come with two friends. All three are wearing red T-shirts that say “I stand with my Muslim neighbours”, in protest at Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the US.

“We are a divided country,” says her friend Karen Nichols, one of hundreds at the Trump rally.

Polling strongly

The finger-pointing is working. Trump is leading in Iowa and New Hampshire, which votes on February 9th, and is polling strongly in the other early-voting states of South Carolina and Nevada. The word “unstoppable” is starting to be mentioned. Cruz, a conservative disrupter in the US senate, was leading in Iowa a few weeks ago, thanks to his popularity among Tea Party conservatives and evangelicals, but then he picked a fight with “the Donald” and has slipped back.

Trump has stunned Washington's political pundits with his staying power after being written off as a carnival-style campaign act early in the race. A Washington Post/ABC poll this week saw a majority of Trump supporters – 57 per cent – say that they will definitely vote for him, well ahead of any other candidate. More than six in 10 Republicans believe that Trump is the one most likely to win the nomination, up from four in 10 in the late autumn.

On the Democratic side, Sanders, who was once written off as a fringe candidate, has turned his long-shot campaign into a close-call race, challenging Clinton's status as the inevitable nominee. He has drawn parallels with her battle against Obama in 2008, when Obama's victory in Iowa damaged her first presidential bid irreparably. An NBC News/Marist/Wall Street Journal poll on Thursday showed Clinton leading 48 per cent to 45 per cent, and Sanders extending his lead in New Hampshire to almost 20 points, from four points in early January.

Clinton has tried to halt Sanders’s late charge by questioning whether his ideas – free healthcare and free college education for all – have any hope of becoming a reality in a divided US Congress. She has painted herself as pragmatic and Sanders as unrealistic.

Contentious issues

He has hit back, reminding voters of Clinton’s recent conversion to once-contentious issues that have the backing of grassroots liberals.

Losing the first two state contests could weaken Clinton for November’s battle with the eventual Republican nominee.

“That is her worst scenario to start this campaign,” says Eric Herzik, a politics professor at the University of Nevada Reno. “I don’t know that it’s fatal, but it really puts pressure on her to then turn the tide rather quickly. If Sanders does well in Iowa and New Hampshire, the momentum tells his supporters: ‘Hey, we can win this.’ ”

The Clinton campaign believes that the former secretary of state has a firewall against Sanders in South Carolina and Nevada, where her popularity among African-Americans and Latinos will put her second presidential bid well on track.

“Bernie may win one or two of the first primaries, and if that is the case South Carolina becomes a showdown,” says David Woodard, a politics professor at Clemson University in the southern state.

To outsiders the idea that predominantly white midwestern Iowa and tiny New Hampshire, in the northeast, are representative of the wider country seems strange. Since 1972, however, the eventual Republican nominee has come from the top three finishers in Iowa, with the exception, in 2008, of John McCain, who came fourth.

“Iowa is a pretty good bellwether,” says Steffen Schmidt, politics professor at Iowa State University. “The Iowa Republicans are more or less representative of Republicans in the rest of the country, maybe a little bit more conservative. The Democrats are pretty representative of Democrats around the country, maybe a little bit more liberal.”

Come Monday night, when Iowa’s 1,681 precincts report back the first official verdict of voters in the 2016 elections, the shape of the most unconventional presidential race in generations might become a little clearer.

We’ll know then if the coffee beans were right.

How do the Iowa caucuses work?

Although the people of Iowa account for less than 1 per cent of the US population, this midwestern state will become the Petri dish of the great American democratic experiment on caucus night on Monday.

Across Iowa’s 1,681 precincts, voters will head to caucus sites – schools, community halls or even people’s homes – for 7pm. The caucuses could be done and dusted by 8.30pm, with results dispatched to the state parties before being distributed to the media.

The Republican and Democrat caucuses are run differently. After Republicans arrive to caucus they will hear speeches from precinct captains representing the candidates, or from the candidates themselves, about why they should vote for them. Each caucus-goer will then write his or her preferred candidate’s name on a slip of paper, to be counted and, finally, reported to the state party. About 120,000 people voted in the 2012 Republican caucus.

The Democratic race is more complicated. When voters arrive at their caucus sites they will be asked to gather in the sections assigned to each candidate. Once counted, if one candidate fails to reach 15 per cent of all voters at the site, those people will be divided up. Precinct captains representing the candidates can canvass voters of the losing candidates to try to win them over to their corner.

In this year’s Democratic race Martin O’Malley’s voters could play a key role in handing victory to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Clinton is polling on average 47 per cent against Sanders’s 45 per cent in Iowa, so O’Malley’s support, standing at 4.4 per cent, could be critical.

“The Iowa caucuses require you to think a little bit,” says Steffen Schmidt, a politics professor at Iowa State University. “You may have made up your mind, but you go and your best friend, who is someone you respect, will say to you: ‘You really shouldn’t vote for this person, because he or she doesn’t have a chance.’ You may say: ‘You may be right, so I will change my mind.’ ” This is what makes the Iowa caucuses so fascinating and so unpredictable.