It didn’t look like he would beat the well-known front-runner, Hillary Clinton.

She was nearly 20 points ahead of him in the national polls.

But then, one month later...

A huge, huge victory.

Obama won the Iowa Caucus.

The Iowa Caucus is like an election, but instead of voting in a voting booth you stand with

other people to be counted. It’s weird.

But it’s also the very first contest in America’s presidential primary process to

determine the two major party’s nominees.

And if you win it, it’s a pretty big deal.

You have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.

[cheering]

Literally overnight, Obama shot up in the polls.

Winning Iowa turned him from a long-shot candidate to a real possibility.

For the last 50 years, Iowa has been a hugely influential part of the presidential primary system.

But in 2020, well…

Epic failure.

Meltdown of the vote reporting system.

First, a bunch of technical mishaps delayed the caucus results.

Then, when the results came out, no one was actually sure if they were correct.

And it started to raise questions about whether the Iowa Caucus deserves to be so important.

The way America’s political parties choose their presidential nominees —

starting in Iowa, and then with 63 other elections on 21 separate days —

was kind of set up quickly, and without any real thought behind the order.

So… why do we choose presidents this way?

And is there a better way to do it?

To understand how we do things now, you have to go back about 50 years.

As recently as the 1960s, only a few states even held primaries.

Most states didn’t.

And party leaders would just pick the presidential nominee at the convention.

Voters were much more divorced from the process than they are today.

This is Li, she’s been covering the 2020 primaries for Vox.

At that time the people in charge were effectively picking the people that would stay in charge

Which mostly worked fine, until 1968.

In the few primaries that year, young democrats voted in big numbers for candidates who were

against the Vietnam War.

But at the convention, the party delegates instead chose the pro-war Vice President.

Who wasn’t even on the ballot in the few states that actually held primaries.

It did not go over well.

Gas is being spread, it’s coming this way and it’s awful.

There was huge push back to that.

The protests were incredibly effective and actually ended up in the changes that we see now.

What changed after that was that the Democratic Party decided to let voters pick the nominee,

with elections in each state.

Republicans soon followed suit.

Today the delegates from each state still officially vote on the nominee at the convention.

Arizona delivers 58 bound votes...

but they have to vote according to how the candidates did in their state primaries.

To win the nomination, a candidate needs a majority of all the delegates.

And big states with big populations, like Florida, have lots of delegates for the taking.

Small states, like Iowa, have just a few.

But even though it’s not a delegate powerhouse, in the sequential primary system, Iowa has

a crucial job.

As do other small states that vote early in the process,

Let’s look at the 2016 Republican primary as an example.

When the Iowa Caucus kicked things off, there were 12 serious candidates on the ballot.

After Iowa, three immediately dropped out.

And after the New Hampshire primary a week later, three more dropped out.

This is what those early states are there to do.

The early states end up winnowing the field to a slate of what people might consider

front runners.

They help candidates generate hype, press coverage, additional donations.

In other words, instead of the rest of the country having to choose between 12 candidates,

early states help the party narrow down its options to just a few viable candidates for

the rest of the primaries.

That also gives voters in these early states a lot of power.

A voter in the earliest state has five times the influence on deciding the nominee as a

voter just a few weeks later.

But here’s the problem with that.

So there was no real rationale in the way that these early states were initially determined.

Iowa goes first because in 1972, the first election after the changes, Iowa said they

needed a long time to compile their results.

So they had to hold their caucus early.

And as it held onto that spot, Iowa got more and more important.

And New Hampshire is the first traditional primary because they have a law saying they

have to be first.

Yup, that's…. it.

And the questions around whether these states should go first are not new.

The main problem that people bring up over and over again is that both states are super

white.

When you look at the actual numeric breakdown, both are about 90 percent white so neither

of these states is very representative of either the US or the party itself.

And that's become a huge concern.

That’s partly why in 2008, the parties moved two more diverse states, Nevada and South

Carolina, to also be early in the calendar.

Then there’s Super Tuesday, which started in the 80s when southern states decided to

have their primaries at the same time to try to have a bit more influence.

Over the years, Super Tuesday has gotten more and more super.

In 2020, one third of all delegates will be awarded on this one day.

In other words, Super Tuesday has been looking more and more like a national primary.

So why not just have a national primary and have everyone vote on the same day?

The answer has to do with who would probably win.

If there was a national primary today, whoever has the most money as well as the

most name recognition would probably do the best because they're able to reach people

and they already have an established backing in place.

Think about that in terms of the 2020 primary.

If everyone voted on one day, and money and name recognition mattered the most, this is

who would probably come out on top.

Remember that poll from December 2007?

If everyone voted at once, Obama would have lost.

Which brings us back to Iowa and New Hampshire.

I won Iowa because I spent 87 days going to every small town, fair and fish fry.

Both Iowa, New Hampshire, they're very accessible.

You can drive around.

You can hold events.

You can go to the fair and meet with voters.

And also their media markets are much cheaper than other larger states like California.

Both of those factors make it easier for a candidate who maybe isn't that well known

and doesn't have a huge amount of money in their pocket to also make the same type of

impression of somebody else who might be, you know, wealthier and more well resourced.

So the sequential system helps narrow the field and starting in a small state can help

underdog candidates emerge.

But should that state be Iowa?

Why start in Iowa?

Well that’s the conversation that we'll absolutely happen after this election cycle.

There have been a bunch of different options floated.

One is to change the state that goes first.

So which state should go first?

The website 538 tried to figure this out by looking at the racial, ethnic, and education

breakdown of every state, to find which one was most representative of the Democratic

Party as a whole.

Number one was Illinois.

Iowa was 42nd.

Another option is to actually just move it so that 10 states that go in February.

That kind of dilutes the influence of Iowa, New Hampshire a little bit.

And then another possibility is the idea of rotating.

They more talk about rotating regions that would dominate the primary one year and a

different region that would dominate the primary a different year.

The way America nominates its presidential candidates isn’t set in stone.

The political parties can and have changed the process over the years, but it’s been awhile.

Maybe it’s time.