‘The largest turnout we’ve ever had:’ Iowa to kick off Trump-fueled voter surge in 2020

In all of his 77 years living in Iowa, Jim Buttelman says he’s caucused only a few times and has never volunteered for a candidate.

This year, he is not only planning to caucus for Joe Biden, but is actively involved in the campaign, attending rallies, making phone calls and urging his friends to support the former vice president. And it’s thanks mostly to one man.

“The Republican Party in general is sitting there silent about what this president is doing,” said Buttelman, who thinks President Donald Trump “needs to be psychiatrically evaluated.”

“We just gotta make a change,” he added.

Monday’s Iowa caucuses are expected to draw near-record Democratic turnout, reaching or even surpassing the historic number set in 2008 amid a clash between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The participation surge is expected to last well beyond Iowa, deep into the rest of the 2020 Democratic primary and the November general election, where polls already show a record amount of voter interest.

And Trump is at the center of the phonenomon, according to interviews with Iowa Democrats and veteran party officials, as well as public surveys. The loathing and dread many Democrats like Buttelman feel for the president is motivating their engagement, they say, contributing to a primary that is less a celebration of the available candidates than a harsh reaction to Trump.

“This doesn’t feel exciting,” said Sue Dvorsky, the former chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party. “This feels absolutely grim.”

Dvorsky, who endorsed Elizabeth Warren last week, emphasized that many voters are still excited about their candidates. But the energy surrounding this primary is still starkly different than what she felt in 2008.

“Everything was possible in 2008, and there was an amazing energy around that,” she said. “And in 2020, everything’s at stake, and there is this amazing determination and force behind that.”

The fear stoked by Trump is evident on the campaign trail, where Democratic officials talk about the president in almost apocalyptic terms and say the election has historic importance.

“There have only been a few elections in our history as important as this one: 1860, 1864, 2020,” said Rep. Colin Allred of Texas, a Biden supporter, comparing this year’s race to the elections of Abraham Lincoln. “Because it’s going to determine the direction we go.”

Allred was speaking recently at a Biden event attended by Buttelman, where about two dozen people showed up early in the morning. Iowa Democratic officials say that campaign events have drawn noticeably more attendees this cycle, even in small rural towns where some candidates have still managed to attract hundreds of people.

“What we’ve been preparing for all along is the largest turnout we’ve ever had,” said Troy Price, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. “Now it’s always hard to predict caucus turnout, but for us, we’ve been focused on being more prepared than we were in 2008.”

Nearly 240,000 Iowa Democrats turned out for the caucuses in 2008. Some party officials in the state,however, still expect that fewer Democrats will participate this year, and because of the unusual process of a caucus, they say predicting exact turnout is difficult.

But at the very least, everyone in the state expects the caucuses will see far more participation than 2016, when roughly 170,000 Democrats took part. In a Des Moines Register/CNN poll conducted last month, 68 percent of likely Iowa caucus-goers said they were either “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about their first-choice candidate.

Price was attending the recent Scott County Red, White and Blue Gala, where local officials say that all nine of their caucus training events were packed with Democrats eager to learn how to participate.

“For us, I’ve told them all along we have to find the biggest sites in every room, have to make sure we have more than enough registration forms, we have to make sure we have more than enough presidential preference cards,” Price said. “We have to be over-prepared for this, so that we have the facilities and everything in place.”

Theories differ on which candidate will benefit the most from increased turnout in Iowa. Bernie Sanders campaign officials have said they think increased participation would be proof that their supporters — many of whom are younger and new to the political process — are turning out. Biden officials counter that their supporters are less likely to participate in caucuses, so any increase would likely benefit their campaign as a result.

A turnout surge wouldn’t be anything new in the Trump era: His presence spurred record participation in special elections in 2017 and 2018. And the 2018 midterm elections saw soaring turnout all over the country, just four years after the 2014 midterms saw record low turnout among all voters.

“The only wild card that really changed between 2014 and 2018 that could explain the increase is Donald Trump,” said Michael McDonald, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Florida who specializes in studying voter turnout.

Polls indicate that voter interest is already high for the general election. A CNN poll from late last year, for example, found that 50 percent of voters described themselves as “extremely” enthusiastic to vote in the election, a higher share than said so during all of the 2016 or 2008 elections.

“He’s going to be here in November and he’s just a polarizing figure,” McDonald said. “He’s inflamed passions in the country, people either love him or hate him. That’s driving a lot of this interest we’re seeing in voting.”

This story was originally published February 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.