Abstract
In this chapter, I present a qualitative analysis of an original dataset collected through interviews of Iowa political elites and a survey of county party officials. After providing the reader with a description of the methods used to collect the data, I identify five major themes from the 2016 presidential campaign as viewed by Iowa’s state and local political elites, including: (1) the enthusiasm gap; (2) antipathy toward Hillary Clinton; (3) differences in campaign organization and elite support; (4) the significance of the rural–urban divide; and (5) 2016 being a “change” election.
Two guys were coming up … I forget which union they were a part of, they were leaving, and I walked up to them, I had to. I said, “I’m the chairman of the Republican Party” and they said, “We’re Democrats.” I said, “Well, first thing I’m going to tell you is welcome, you are more than welcome here.” I said, “I gotta ask you, … why are you here? I mean we’re glad you are here, but why are you here?” “He’s the only one that will say what’s on his mind.” I really think, even though that’s just two people, one day, and they cared enough about it to show up at this rally, I really think that was replayed and I think it crossed party lines, and I think it crossed ideological lines, and I think it tapped into that long time historic trend, and I think he had kind of a perfect storm going there.
—Jeff Kaufmann, Chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The survey questionnaire and interview schedule are available from the author upon request. Data collection for the survey of county party officials and interviews of state political elites was cleared by the Central College Institutional Research Board on November 13, 2018 (IRB #H-45-F2018-AG).
- 2.
The reports are housed in a database by the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board: https://webapp.iecdb.iowa.gov/PublicView/?d=county.
- 3.
The pre-survey letter and survey process began in mid-November to avoid overlap with the 2018 midterm election. If the survey had been distributed during the campaign, it was feared that county party officials may have ignored the invitation.
- 4.
Geographic region boundaries were based upon the Iowa Department of Transportation’s 511 Social Media Sites (https://iowadot.gov/511/511-social-media-sites). The NE/NW overlapped counties were reallocated with Hamilton, Hancock, Winnebago, and Wright Counties in northwest Iowa and Butler, Floyd, Grundy, and Mitchell Counties in northeast Iowa.
- 5.
In transcribing specific quotes from the interview recordings, filler phrases such as “ums,” “uhs,” “ands,” or “you know” have been filtered out.
- 6.
This does not include staff from the Iowa Democratic Party who were working with the campaign to elect Clinton. Including coordinated campaign staff would increase the number to between 150 and 200 staffers in Iowa.
- 7.
McGuire notes the lack of elite support was not due to an unwillingness to support Clinton, but an inability to be on the campaign trail during 2016. Boswell was defeated in 2012, no longer in Congress, and fighting cancer. Braley gave up his House seat in 2014 to run for the Senate and was defeated by Joni Ernst. After the election, he moved to Colorado. Neither Harkin nor Vilsack could undertake partisan advocacy during 2016. Harkin had retired from the Senate in 2014 and was working on his nonpartisan institute at Drake University in Des Moines. Vilsack was still serving in the Obama administration as the Secretary of Agriculture. This left Loebsack as the only federal elected official on the Democratic side.
- 8.
Question 5 of the survey was recoded following the same process used to recode Question 3. Please see Sect. 2.3 for a detailed description.
- 9.
There are theoretical reasons in the literature which explain why Obama voters could shift their votes to Trump in 2016 based upon racial bias. For example, see Sides et al. (2018).
- 10.
Unfortunately, no measure of sexism is available in an individual-level dataset of 2016 Iowa voters. See note 1 in Chap. 4 for more information regarding why the role of sexism in explaining 2016 vote choice is not investigated further using survey data.
References
Appleman, Eric M. 2017a. Clinton 2016 General Election Campaign Organization, Iowa. Last Modified July 21, 2017. http://www.p2016.org/clinton/clintongenia.html.
———. 2017b. Trump 2016 General Election Campaign Organization, Iowa. Last Modified on May 26, 2017. http://www.p2016.org/trump/trumpgenia.html.
Boeyink, Jeff. 2018. Interview by Author. Des Moines, December 17.
Branstad, Eric. 2018. Interview by Author. Des Moines, December 13.
Chen, Lanhee J., and Andrew Reeves. 2011. Turning Out the Base or Appealing to the Periphery? An Analysis of County-Level Candidate Appearances in the 2008 Presidential Campaign. American Politics Research 39 (3): 534–556. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1532673X10385286.
Cramer, Katherine J. 2016. The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
D’Alessandro, Pete. 2018. Interview by Author. Des Moines, December 19.
Darr, Joshua. 2017. The Incredible Shrinking Democratic Ground Game. Mischiefs of Faction, November 16. https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2017/11/16/16665756/shrinking-democratic-ground-game.
———. 2019. Earning Iowa: Local Newspapers and the Invisible Primary. Social Science Quarterly 100 (1): 320–327. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12565.
Darr, Joshua P., and Matthew S. Levendusky. 2014. Relying on the Ground Game: The Placement and Effect of Campaign Field Offices. American Politics Research 42 (3): 529–548. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1532673X13500520.
Desjardins, Lisa, and Daniel Bush. 2016. The Trump Campaign Has a Ground-Game Problem. PBS News Hour, August 30. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-campaign-has-ground-game-problem.
Devine, Christopher J. 2018. What If Hillary Clinton Had Gone to Wisconsin? Presidential Campaign Visits and Vote Choice in the 2016 Election. The Forum 16 (2): 211–234. https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2018-0011.
Exit Polls. 2016a. Exit Polls: National President. Last Modified November 23, 2016. https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls.
———. 2016b. Exit Polls: Iowa President. Last Modified November 23, 2016. https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/iowa/president.
Fiorina, Morris P. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Gambio, Lazaro, and Dan Keating. 2016. How Trump Redrew the Electoral Map, from Sea to Shining Sea. Washington Post. Last Modified November 9, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/election-results-from-coast-to-coast/.
Gerber, Alan S., and Donald P. Green. 2000. The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment. American Journal of Political Science 94 (3): 653–663. https://doi.org/10.2307/2585837.
Heersink, Boris, and Brenton D. Peterson. 2017. Truman Defeats Dewey: The Effect of Campaign Visits on Election Outcomes. Electoral Studies 49: 49–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2017.07.007.
Holbrook, Thomas M., and Scott D. McClurg. 2005. The Mobilization of Core Supporters: Campaigns, Turnout, and Electoral Composition in United States Presidential Elections. American Journal of Political Science 49 (4): 689–703. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2005.00149.x.
Kaufmann, Jeff. 2019. Interview by Author. Des Moines, February 14.
Key, V.O. 1966. The Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting, 1936–1960. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kimball, Spencer. 2016. Emerson College Poll: Iowa Leaning for Trump 44% to 41%. Grassley, Coasting to a Blowout, Likely to Retain Senate Seat. Emerson College Poll, November 4. https://www.scribd.com/document/330116136/11-4-Iowa-Emerson.
King, David C., and David Morehouse. 2004. Moving Voters in the 2000 Presidential Campaign: Local Visits, Local Media. In Lights, Camera, Campaign! Media, Politics, and Political Advertising, ed. David A. Schultz, 301–317. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Kochel, David. 2018. Interview by Author. Phone. December 18, 2018.
Langer, Gary. 2016. Clinton, Trump All But Tied as Enthusiasm Dips for Democratic Candidate. ABC News, November 1. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-trump-tied-democratic-enthusiasm-dips/story?id=43199459.
Link, Jeff. 2019. Interview by Author. Des Moines, January 3.
Longworth, Richard C. 2016. Disaffected Rust Belt Voters Embraced Trump. They Had No Other Hope. The Guardian, November 21. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/21/disaffected-rust-belt-voters-embraced-donald-trump-midwestern-obama.
Masket, Seth E. 2009. Did Obama’s Ground Game Matter? The Influence of Local Field Offices During the 2008 Presidential Election. Public Opinion Quarterly 73 (5): 1023–1039. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfp077.
Masket, Seth, and Jennifer Victor. 2016. Clinton Has More Than 3 Times as Many Campaign Offices as Trump. How Much of an Advantage Is This? Mischiefs of Faction, October 5. https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2016/10/5/13174624/trump-field-offices.
McGuire, Andy. 2018. Interview by Author. Des Moines, December 18.
Middleton, Joel A., and Donald P. Green. 2008. Do Community-Based Voter Mobilization Campaigns Work Even in Battleground States? Evaluating the Effectiveness of MoveOn’s 2004 Outreach Campaign. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 3 (1): 63–82. https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00007019.
Miller, Warren E., and J. Merrill Shanks. 1996. The New American Voter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Milligan, Susan. 2016. The Fight on the Ground. The Civic Report, U.S. News & World Report, October 14. https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2016-10-14/donald-trump-abandons-the-ground-game.
Noble, Jason. 2016a. Iowa Dems Announce 7 New Offices, Now Have 24 Statewide. Des Moines Register, August 17. ProQuest.
———. 2016b. Early Voting Numbers in Iowa Revealed. Des Moines Register, October 22. ProQuest.
Price, Troy. 2019. Interview by Author. Pella, IA. February 22.
Rosenstone, Steven J., and John Mark Hansen. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. New York: Macmillan Publishing.
Rynard, Pat. 2016. Clinton and Democrats Build an Army in Iowa for November. Iowa Starting Line (blog), July 19. https://iowastartingline.com/2016/07/19/clinton-and-democrats-build-an-army-in-iowa-for-november/.
Saad, Lydia. 2016. Trump and Clinton Finish with Historically Poor Images. Gallup News, November 8. https://news.gallup.com/poll/197231/trump-clinton-finish-historically-poor-images.aspx.
Shaw, Daron R. 1999. The Effect of TV Ads and Candidate Appearances on Statewide Presidential Votes, 1988–96. American Political Science Review 93 (2): 345–361. https://doi.org/10.2307/2585400.
Shepard, Steven. 2015. The 2016 Enthusiasm Gap. Politico, December 30. https://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/2016-enthusiasm-republicans-democrats-217198.
Sides, John, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck. 2018. Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Silver, Nate. 2017. Clinton’s Ground Game Didn’t Cost Her the Election. FiveThirtyEight.com , February 13. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clintons-ground-game-didnt-cost-her-the-election/.
Sinclair, Betsy, Margaret McConnell, and Melissa R. Michelson. 2013. Local Canvassing: The Efficacy of Grassroots Voter Mobilization. Political Communication 30 (1): 42–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2012.737413.
Struthers, Cynthia B., and Janet L. Bokemeier. 2000. Myths and Realities of Raising Children and Creating Family Life in a Rural County. Journal of Family Issues 21 (1): 17–46. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F019251300021001002.
Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wood, Thomas. 2016. What the Heck Are We Doing in Ottumwa, Anyway? Presidential Candidate Visits and Their Political Consequence. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 667 (1): 110–125. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0002716216661488.
Wuthnow, Robert. 2018. The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Green, A.D. (2020). Viewing the 2016 Presidential Campaign Through the Lens of Iowa Political Elites. In: From the Iowa Caucuses to the White House. Palgrave Studies in US Elections. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22499-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22499-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-22498-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-22499-8
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)