Sanders wins Tufts mock Iowa caucus, Warren close behind

The Fletcher Democrats, the Tufts Political Science Department and JumboVote hosted a mock Iowa Caucus last night in Barnum Hall, during which students demonstrated support for their preferred choice of Democratic presidential nominee.

Much like the real Iowa caucuses, students stood in designated parts of the room to show support for their candidate of choice. After tallying the first round, any student supporting a candidate that didn’t receive 15% of the self-reported vote could redistribute their support to a new candidate for the second round.

After the first round, student organizer Sam Green announced the self-reported distribution of support between the candidates.Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was in the lead with approximately 33% of the vote, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in second with 27% of the vote. The next two candidates were Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who almost made the threshold with 14.2% of the vote and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg who had 12.5%.  The other candidates that received student support were businessman and entrepreneur Andrew Yang and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with 10.4% and 6.2% of the vote respectively. There were no students supporting former Vice President Joe Biden.

Green, a second-year graduate student at The Fletcher School and co-president of the Fletcher Democrats, also announced the self-reported distribution of support between the candidates at the end of the second round, which was also the end of the caucus. Sanders edged out the win at 34%, with Warren close behind with 33% of the vote. Buttigieg came in third with 18% of the vote and Klobuchar came in fourth with 13%.

Green explained that this event was organized to help educate students about the inner workings of caucuses so they can have a better understanding of how our democratic system works.

“For a lot of people, the caucus is this mysterious enigma that happens, but people don’t really understand how it works and how it’s really a lot like a town hall," Green said. "It goes along with the mission of [Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life] to help support civic engagement and educating the student body and how it actually works. Plus, it’s also fun and it’s a way to get people together.”

Lidya Woldeyesus, the student co-chair of JumboVote, coordinated the event with the Fletcher Democrats in the hopes of reaching graduate students on campus and encouraging them to vote.

“We were really excited about this collaboration because graduate students are voting at a lower rate than undergraduate students,” Woldeyesus, a sophomore, said.  “JumboVote was designed in 2016 to be a university-wide initiative, but it has been very focused on undergraduates. There’s a lot of work to be done with undergraduates, but we need to do more outreach with graduate students, so when this opportunity arose we thought it would be a perfect fit because this is such an exciting time during the primary season.”

While the results from this mock caucus are certainly informative, Green noted that they likely wouldn't represent the overall political leanings of the country.

“I’m guessing due to the age of our average caucusgoer here, young folks tend to lean more progressive, so I image that the fact that 67% of the totals went to Bernie or Warren is higher than what will actually happen in Iowa," Green said. "I imagine some of the more moderate leaning democrats will get a higher total."

Woldeyesus added that the demographic makeup was also heavily skewed.

“It was a very white group,” Woldeyesus added.

The results of the 2020 Iowa caucuses were not available at press time.