MATH 1030 - Voting Project

The Iowa Caucuses

​ esearch the Iowa Caucuses and explain how they work. Your response should be
Part I:​ R

a one-page (250-word) narrative. Be sure to include a brief history, how a caucus differs

from a typical primary election, and why the Iowa Caucuses play such an important role in

American presidential elections.

Iowa has used caucuses for presidential elections since the 1800’s. There was a time in

1916 that they switched over to primary elections which is where the citizens of iowa would

complete a local election, but quickly went back to caucuses, because they found them to be

more efficient. Iowa Caucus are used for electing a candidate running for president. Iowa is

divided into precincts where people in each of these groups come together, Democrats and

Republicans do the election process different and on a different day. Democrats hold meetings in

libraries or schools where they discuss who is the better candidate for the democratic party. They

choose sides and see who has the least amount of “voters”, any candidate with less than 15% of

votes are automatically disqualified. This process repeats itself until only one candidate is left,

when that does happen they put together the delegate count and send it to headquarters.

Republicans on the other hand do these elections privately, they write down who they want as

president on a paper, the votes are then counted and given to headquarters.The way Republicans

hold these elections is much like everyone else across the United States. Iowa is the first state to

have a complete vote which is what makes them so important. By seeing who Iowa votes for,

presidential candidates are able to see if their message is being effectively distributed. Since they

are the first state to hold a vote the presidential candidates are able to use this as a tell or a guide
to who will win. They are also able to change up their message to influence more people if they

see that it wasn’t working, these people are mostly those who fall behind shortly of the “winner”.

Sometimes the candidates in the category where they had less than 15% of votes know that it’s

highly unlikely that they will win.

Part II: Imagine you live in Mason City, Iowa and attend a Republican caucus for Precinct

W1-P2 at the Highland Golf Course. The meeting organizers ask the voters to select their

preferences for four candidates. The following preference schedule summarizes the results

of the poll.

# of voters 19 6 36 39

1st B R C T

2nd R B R R

3rd C C B C

4th T T T B
B is Jeb Bush, C is Ted Cruz, R is Marco Rubio, and T is Donald Trump

Use this preference schedule to answer the following questions about various voting

methods. Vocabulary words in bold are defined in the Voting Theory section in Math in

Society .

I. How many people voted? 100

II. Who wins by plurality method? T

Part II: (Continued)

 iii. Suppose we use Instant Runoff Voting. Remove the candidate with the least 1st

Choice votes and show the preference schedule.

# of Voters 19 6 36 39

1st R R C T

2nd C C R R

3rd T T T C

iv. Remove the candidate with the least 1st Choice votes and show the preference

schedule.

# of Voters 19 6 36 39

1st C C C T

2nd T T T C

v. Who wins by Instant Runoff Voting?​ ​C

vi. Calculate a Borda Count for each candidate. ​ B: 205 R: 306

C: 272 T: 217

vii. Who wins by Borda Count?​ ​R

viii. How many points does each candidate get using Copeland's Method?

B: 1 R: 3

C: 2 T: 0

ix. Who wins by Copeland's Method?​ R

 x. Is there a Condorcet Candidate? ​Y

xi. If so, who is the Condorcet Candidate? ​R

Part lll:

Candidate R is the delegate of the precinct W1-P2 of Iowa. I came to this conclusion based on

my calculations. I used the Borda Count method where you have to multiply by the number of

first, second, third, or fourth place voters starting from the top. For example if there are four

votes and the first place vote is 2 you multiply that by 4, the second place vote is then multiply

by 3, so on and so forth with the last place vote being multiplied by 1. Using the preference

schedule as a reference, I went ahead and did the Borda Count Method which resulted in

candidate R being the winner with 306 points, C with 272 , B with 217, and B with 205. I also

used Copeland's Method which is where each candidate versus each other, the one with the

higher number is assigned one point unless there’s a tie where they get assigned half a point,the

points are then totalled, and a winner is picked. Using this method candidate R won again with 3

points C with 2 points, B with 1 point, and T with 0 points. Condorcet Method was also used

which is similar to Copeland's Method where the candidates verse each other. Candidate R won

again. Using the condorcet criterion candidate R is the rightful delegate winner, using all these

methods has only helped proved this.