The top Democratic candidates for president will debate Tuesday night for the last time before the Iowa Caucuses on Feb. 3. Those caucuses are the first primary elections of the year, and are believed to be an indicator for how candidates will do in later contests. That means that the nation’s 31st-most-populous state has an outsize influence over candidates’ fates.
But Dan Solomon argues in his latest story for Texas Monthly that Texas should be the state with that honor.
“Iowa is not really a representative state when it comes to looking at the demographics of the rest of the country,” Solomon says.
Iowa demographics, Solomon says, are a lot more rural, white and older than the rest of the country. This gives a narrow slice of the American electorate a lot of influence over who’s going to be president. Texas, on the other hand, is more diverse in terms of geography and population, he says.
“Demographically, we’re certainly more diverse than the rest of the country, but in ways that reflect where the country is headed,” Solomon says. “I think that in 2020, if you’re a much whiter state than the rest of the country, then you’re not really representing the future.”
Listen to the rest of the story in the player above.
Written by Morgan Kuehler.
