You might think from headlines like these that Trump scored a great victory in the Iowa caucuses yesterday. Even headlines that just said he won are telling the wrong story.
They focused on the horse race. Just on the candidates and their votes.
The real story for me is about the GOP who simply didn't vote.
Let's look at this chart from @analogmeat on Spoutible:
I've checked the numbers and they're good on the results percentages, but the Iowa Capitol Dispatch says that as of last week there were 687,000 registered Republicans voters in Iowa, fewer than in the chart.
The real story, it seems to me is this:
Barely 8% of Iowa registered GOP voters voted for Trump.
Just under 8% of Iowa registered GOP voters voted for candidates other than Trump.
About 84% of Iowa registered GOP voters DID NOT VOTE.
Put another way, 92% of Iowa registered GOP voters DID NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP.
That seems to me to be the big story. Most GOP stayed home. Sure the weather was bad, but even so, that sounds like a huge vote of no confidence for the GOP front runner. Or for the other GOP candidates for that matter.
Maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe only a small percentage of Iowa voters have participated in the caucuses historically. But if that's the case, it's the media horserace coverage of elections - who's winning and by how much - that have made this farce into something of national significance.
I'm sure Mike in Iowa will fill me in if I'm wrong.
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