The Making of the Iowa Caucuses: 20 Minutes That Changed History

(Hope I can post it here, since Iowa is already in the rear window..)

It was January 1976, and Tom Whitney was minutes away from achieving a goal he’d been pursuing for nearly three years: establishing Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses as a can’t-miss political spectacle. Thanks largely to his efforts, the entire firmament of American political journalism had flocked to Des Moines to cover the vote for the first time. In a nearby ballroom, dozens of reporters hovered over typewriters, eyeing the clock.

At about 9 p.m., the final results from the Democratic side were called in, put to paper and delivered to Mr. Whitney—the state party’s 31-year-old chairman. He read them once, read them again and felt a wave of emotion. It was panic. The story he’d sold was that Iowa could become the ultimate proving ground for presidential hopefuls. These numbers told a different story. They suggested Iowa was a waste of time.

Only a fraction of Iowa’s registered Democrats had turned out that night, while 7% of its total precincts failed to post any results. Worse yet, almost 40% of the caucus participants had declined to back anyone. The only useful news was that a long shot, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, had received the most support. His tally, however, was far from impressive. In fact, he’d only managed to secure a sliver of the state’s 47 available delegates. The official delegate count Mr. Whitney was supposed to release to the media in a matter of minutes looked like this: Uncommitted (39); Jimmy Carter (8); All Others (0).

(snip)

After huddling with the party’s statistician, he had an idea. Under Iowa rules, candidates couldn’t be awarded any delegates unless they won at least 15% of the overall vote. But what if they just ignored that rule and used each candidate’s share of the raw vote to project how many delegates they would have earned if the rule didn’t exist? In other words, if a candidate got 10% support (and by rule, zero delegates), they would instead be awarded 10% of the uncommitted delegates. Calculated thusly, the results looked like this: Uncommitted (18); Jimmy Carter (13); Birch Bayh (6); Fred Harris (5); Morris Udall (3); Sargent Shriver (2); all others (0).

(snip)

The “projected” results did the trick. The press declared Jimmy Carter the surprise winner in Iowa. In interviews, Mr. Whitney called Mr. Carter’s performance “striking.” Nobody said a word about his sleight of hand. The Des Moines Register eventually caught on and issued a mild rebuke, and in 1988, the Iowa legislature passed a law requiring anyone reporting presidential caucus results to do so as directed. But by that point, the die was cast. Iowa had been the turning point for Mr. Carter, who rode it all the way to the White House.

More..

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-making-of-the-iowa-caucuses-20-minutes-that-changed-history-11581084000 (subscription)

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And the rest as it is said, is history.