The Iowa Democratic Party announced on Friday that it will hold a caucus on January 15 but will not disclose the results until early March, retaining its state’s leadoff position on the presidential nominating calendar without violating a new national party order that has South Carolina going first in 2024.
The Iowa Republican Party has already scheduled its caucus for that day, which is a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Democrats will only meet in person to partake in down-ballot races and deal with non-presidential party business, whereas the Republican caucus will kick off voting in the party’s competitive presidential primary.
The Democratic presidential election will be conducted by mail throughout January and February, with the results not being announced until Super Tuesday, March 5.
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“We believe this delegate selection plan is definitely a compromise,” Rita Hart, chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, said on a conference call with reporters.
The change is part of a larger effort to revamp the state’s Democratic caucus after 2020, when technical errors caused a meltdown and prevented The Associated Press from announcing a winner.
President Joe Biden requested that the National Democratic Party change the traditional sequence of its primaries and allow South Carolina to go first. He suggested that in-person caucusing, which requires participants to congregate for hours on election night, discourages participation among low-propensity voters and should be abandoned in order to empower Black and other minority voters who are essential to the party’s support base.
The DNC subsequently approved a new primary calendar for 2024, with South Carolina’s primary kicking off voting on February 3, followed three days later by New Hampshire and Nevada, which will exchange its caucus for a primary. Georgia would vote fourth on February 13 and Michigan would vote fifth on February 27 — before the majority of the nation votes on Super Tuesday.
Friday, hours after the initial announcement of the plan, the Democratic National Committee’s rules committee met in St. Louis and voted to advance Iowa into conditional compliance with the new party rules. Once the final logistical details have been worked out, full sanction can be granted.
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Democratic officials in Iowa, on the other hand, have stated for months that they are attempting to preserve a first-in-the-nation caucus while adhering to new party rules.
The national party has assured state Democrats that Iowa could be among the first states on the 2028 presidential calendar, when the Democratic primary will be competitive and states going first will receive significantly more attention from candidates and the media.
“We know who our nominee is here in 2024. We know that President Biden is going to be our presidential nominee,” Hart said. “What’s really important is that we put ourselves in a good position for 2028.”
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