DES MOINES, Ia. -- The compression of the primary calendar could seriously damage the ability of students to participate in the Iowa caucuses in January, say students and political observers in the state. Traditionally held in the middle or toward the end of January, this year the caucuses, which kick off the presidential primary calendar for both parties, are scheduled for Jan. 14, a day when most colleges and universities in the state will still be on winter recess.
"Christmas vacation ends a week after the January 14 caucuses," Des Moines' Drake University Democrats president Jordan Oster, 20, noted after catching New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson at the Iowa State Fair earlier this month. "That's definitely a big concern….[in 2004] people got back onto campus the weekend before the caucuses."
"The earlier date just makes it more difficult for everybody," he added.
It will also make it difficult for any political campaign that is relying on student organizers to drive older voters to the caucus sites, go door-knocking in the weeks before the caucuses, or win student precincts based on simple spill-over effects from younger Iowans' general enthusiasm for their candidate.
The one possible positive effect of the disruption is that Iowa-resident students may be able to caucus at home with their families in their rural or small-town precincts of origin during the winter break, where their votes will have more impact. But this scenario, says one long-time political observer, is unlikely.
"What you generally see at the caucuses are generally older, leathery hard-core political members of the community, political wonks or political animals -- and that doesn't include a lot of students," says Iowa State University political science professor Steffen Schmidt, a caucus expert who also hosts the weekly "Dr. Politics" radio show on the local on National Public Radio affiliate WOI-AM. "The numbers aren't large to begin with and they will be less this year because the students won't be back."
The Florida legislature's decision to move its primary to January 29 and Michigan's threat to move its primary to Jan. 15 may make the situation even worse for campaigns relying on students and young people. A move by Michigan could lead to a worst-case-scenario cascade of changes, with New Hampshire moving its primary up as well. This could force Iowa to move its first-in-the-nation caucus to Jan. 5 in order stay first while keeping the caucuses in 2008. Should Iowa move its caucuses to an even earlier January date, even Iowa State University, which is scheduled to resume classes on Jan. 14, will be on break.
As things now stand, however, Iowa State in Ames is the only major university that will have resumed classes by Jan. 14. On that day, students will have to balance their first day of classes with an evening caucus, should they wish to participate. The University of Iowa, in Iowa City, is on break until Jan. 22. Grinnell College, in Grinnell, reopens on Jan. 18.
Not every university precinct will be equally undermined by the absence of students. At Grinnell College, where a greater percentage of students between 2002 and 2006 came from India (13.6 percent), than from Iowa (12.3 percent), it might not make a huge difference that most of the 1400-person student body will be scattered across the United States and various foreign nations on caucus night. Only a tiny fraction of such out-of-state students could be expected caucus, regardless of the date of the political event.
But at schools like the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, the majority of students are Iowans. Nearly 30,000 students enrolled at the University of Iowa last year, and 64 percent came from Iowa. Of the roughly 20,000 undergraduates, 58 percent were Iowa resident students, according to University of Iowa admissions director Michael Barron. "They do travel during the winter break," he said. "I would image many, many, many of them would go [out of town]." Many members of the faculty of 1,700 also travel during the nearly month-long break. Seventy percent of Iowa State's 26,000 undergraduate and graduate students are drawn from within the state; they, too, can be relied upon to travel during the break.
The campaign that has drawn most support from students and academics, in the form of donations from professors and turnout from young people at events, is that of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. His Iowa press secretary Tommy Vietor said that the Obama campaign is aware that "you could lose some of those" out-of-state students who will be away for break and who might otherwise have caucused, but that there might also be an advantage to having an in-state student caucus at home in, say, rural Mahaska County instead of Polk or Johnson Counties, where the big schools are based. "Generally, a strong campaign with a strong organization will get people to the caucuses," he said.
Carrie Giddins, communications director for the Democratic Party of Iowa, noted that students can register to participate in their home-precinct caucuses at the door. "Students can caucus at home," she said. "At the caucus site, they can register or change their registration."
Because the caucuses are a party event designed to select delegates for candidates to a county convention and not a state-administered election involving votes, regular state voting rules do not apply. The only entrance requirement is that caucus-goers must be registered to vote in Iowa and must be Democrats. They can register to vote as Democrats onsite at the schools and lodges where citizens meet for caucusing, and then enter and join a preference group. Students can change which of the 1,784 precincts they are registered to caucus in on the day of the caucus, whenever that is, and as long as they have a legitimate home address in the caucus at which they appear.
"It may, oddly enough, for most Iowa college students, increase their importance because they'll then be fanning across the state to their home precincts," says Alec Schierenbeck, 20, the president of College and Young Democrats of Iowa and the College Democrats of Grinnell. A rising junior at Grinnell, Schierenbeck is optimistic about student participation. "I think that people are so excited on campus that that's going to carry over to their home caucus," he says. The early caucus date "will diminish the impact of out-of-state students, but there aren't too many in Iowa, so there is sort of a measured impact."
Even so, some campuses, such as Grinnell, are making plans to re-open early so students can return in time for the caucuses. "I think you're going to see arrangements like that spring up all over the state," said Schierenbeck. Drake University Democrats are already working on a similar arrangement at their school, said Oster.
Iowa State's Schmidt, having observed the caucuses for 37 years, is far less sanguine.
"It is definitely going to have a potential negative impact," he says. Every election cycle, he says he can pick out the three main student precincts based only on knowing the percentage of the eligible population that voted, which is always lowest in the college precincts. "If the students are not going to the polling places, which are open from early morning until evening, and you have absentee ballots... I have to extrapolate from that the percentages of people going to a caucus is lower because a caucus is more work and you're not actually electing anyone, you're voting for delegates who go to the county convention," explains Schmidt. "They're four levels removed from anything that is hard politics. The turnout is not going to be very high and it's going to be impaired even more if the caucuses come when the students aren't around."
And that, perhaps, may be the best news for campaigns in the state. With 83 percent of caucus-goers over the age of 30 in 2004 and 91 percent over age 30 in 2000, student caucus participation is already so low that a disruption in it may not have more than a mild impact on the efforts of most of the campaigns.
