We are now three weeks away from the Iowa Caucus, and there is still no clear frontrunner in the state. WGBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu checked in with Iowa Public Radio reporter and co-host Clay Masters as part of a weekly segment about what’s on voters’ minds leading up to the caucuses. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: [There’s] been a lot of talk in New Hampshire about the high number of undecided voters at this stage of the game. There appears to be a pretty high number in Iowa, as well.
Clay Masters: It wasn’t normal four years ago because on the Democratic side, it was very much a showdown between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. But now we have a much larger field of candidates that it’s kind of a jump ball right now. We had an Iowa poll that came out on Friday of last week, which is this very respected poll from Ann Selzer, who’s a pollster here in Iowa. It’s seen as the gold standard by Nate Silver. It showed that Bernie Sanders was on top, but Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden [and] Pete Buttigieg [are] all kind of within the margin of error, right below Sanders. So, I mean, people are still making up their minds. I was out on the trail this last weekend at numerous events. You did find some people who were committed to their person, but there’s still a lot of undecided people out there.
Mathieu: Clay, we saw Sen. Elizabeth Warren was in Marshalltown over the weekend, joined for the first time by Julian Castro. Some have suggested they’re kind of road testing a possible ticket for the general election. You were there.
Masters: Yes, I was. And Julian Castro certainly spent a lot of time in Iowa while he was running for his own presidential campaign. He suspended his campaign, obviously, in January this year. I say “January” like it was a long time ago. That is still the month that we’re living in. But he was there, he spoke ahead of time [and] he kind of helped out some of her campaign speech. You know, just in setting her up, telling her backstory that I’ve been hearing so many times throughout the last year. She came out, the two of them took pictures with everybody afterwards.
And Julian Castro is throwing his support behind Elizabeth Warren. That’s seen as maybe a way to bring in more people to her campaign. Certainly, it’s good for her. He was very critical towards the ending weeks of his campaign of Iowa going first in the presidential nominating process because of its lack of diversity. This is a very overwhelmingly white state. Elizabeth Warren was asked about that and if she agrees with Julian Castro afterwards by reporters and she said that he brings up an important issue, but she says she thinks the first four early states in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada are good and representative of the country. So certainly she’s seeing Julian Castro as somebody that can maybe bring some more support into her campaign.
Mathieu: It’s interesting. They have a similar conversation in New Hampshire every four years. How does that go over with voters?
Masters: Well, I mean, one of the things I often talk about is it’s not like everybody in Iowa knows exactly what the Iowa caucuses are. They know that there is a tension because certainly if they’re watching television or looking at streaming services and are getting the ads. But people that are very engaged in the caucus process don’t want to see it go away. They like that there’s this one-on-one kind of situation that happens between themselves and candidates.
But there are people here, even within the Democratic Party, who say the caucuses aren’t the most accessible way. You’ve got a turnout on a cold February night, and many people can’t make it to stand in a gym at a high school for two or three hours and debate who the candidate should be. So there are definitely people who do not like the process because they cannot attend. But though those die-hards that are very engaged and go to these rallies, go to these events, hear from the surrogates, even, they certainly don’t want the caucuses to go away and not be first in the nation.
Mathieu: Well, the final debate before the caucus is Tuesday night’s Des Moines Register-CNN debate. Six candidates on the stage this time, Clay. Are people actually watching these in Iowa? Do they need to, with all the one-on-one encounters they’re having?
Masters: Well, certainly people that can’t go to these events that are on weekends, I’m sure, will be watching the debate. We spend a lot of time talking about the different lanes that candidates are in, like the Bernie Sanders [and] Elizabeth Warren kind of left lane and the centrist lane in between. But people are just talking about the personality of these candidates and what they like about them [and] what they bring to the Democratic Party.
I talked to several people over the last weekend who had said that they had seen this person and they were still wanting to see this person. They’re still winnowing the field [for] their top three or four candidates.
