Thursday, January 5, 2012

A little undue influence

The big political story Wednesday was Mitt Romney's "victory" in the Iowa caucuses. But with only 24.6% of the delegates, that means 75.4% of the delegates wanted someone other than Mr. Romney. The big winners would seem to be Rick Santorum who picked up 24.5% of the delegates and Ron Paul who garnered 21.4%.

Let's face it, Mr. Santorum is nobody compared to the machine the Romney operates. Romney spent enough money in Iowa to fund a Third World dictatorship while Mr. Santorum spent just a little over a million dollars. At the same time, Ron Paul, whose views are, shall we say, just a bit out of the Republican mainstream, came in a strong third.

I'm not interested in the fact that Mr. Romney beat Mr. Santorum by all of 8 delegates. I'm more interested in how he won by only 8 delegates.

And just why does Iowa get such disproportionate influence when it comes to picking a president? It's not like Iowa is in any way representative of the nation's population.

Iowa is 61% urban while the US is 82% urban. 

Iowa is 91.3% white while the US is 63.7% white.

African-Americans make up only 2.9% of the Iowa population versus 12.2% of the US population.

And it's not like New Hampshire is any more representative.

3 comments:

A Voice of Sanity said...

Iowa is now only the 5th-whitest state in America (after ME, VT, WV, & NH)!

Paul B. Kennedy said...

Thanks for the comment.

And just why do we allow two of the whitest states in the Union to winnow down the candidates? It makes no sense whatsoever.

A Voice of Sanity said...

I'm sure the white supremacists / tea baggers think it's a great idea.