Maybe… It’s a little bit of both?

By: Sallie Hardy

At Elon, I study Media Analytics and English Literature. Many people consider this a strange combination because most people either like math or reading, not both…but here I am! Something I have learned about myself is that I am full of contradictions (and I typically try to find contradictions in anything I’m doing… I mean hello?? I am on a Poli-Sci/Journalism trip). In a literature class, this would be discovering Edgar Allan Poe writing about a beautiful blonde girl instead of creepy beating hearts or in a media analytics class noticing when spikes in graphs don’t line up with the debut of a new product. These are the little things I always search for because I believe contradictions make things interesting. 

After spending time on phones and knocking on doors, I’ve found a contradiction I was not expecting. Iowa has a combination of the most politically charged people in the world AND the least politically charged, all in one state. Many Iowans are politically engaged and interested in talking about the different candidates, but there are many who just aren’t. So many Americans look to the Iowa Caucus to help make their decisions about the next presidential nominee, but some of the Iowans I’ve come into contact with don’t even know who is running. I know this happens everywhere, but given the importance of the Iowa caucus, this was surprising…to say the least.

On my first day of volunteering, my canvassing buddy and I were dropped off in a neighborhood made up of mobile homes, RVs, and very few democrats. Although Iowans are thought to be some of  the nicest people in the world, they also know exactly how to make canvassers feel unwelcomed. We ran into many situations where we were literally blocked from doors either with benches or bird cages, and some would have their storm door handles or doorbells removed. We even watched one woman tell her dogs to bark at us while she laughed through the window. 

At the doors we finally had “success” with, I was shocked by how many people were willing to settle on a candidate without asking any questions. We talked to many people who had clearly made up their minds and had reason to do so, but some people seemed to want to ignore facts about candidates. We walked up to a door of a blue mobile home decorated with a screen porch and a rusty car. We knocked on the door and waited a while, and finally a large man stepped through the doorway to speak with us. We had barely gotten through the typical volunteer spiel when he started lecturing us about how he just wants our current president out of office. We attempted to explain that we fully agreed and tried to steer the conversation back to Buttigieg. This man was not going to have it. He told us he didn’t mind Pete, and he truly didn’t have much of an opinion on him because his favorite candidate was… Ray. Ray? Neither of us had ever heard of a Ray running. The man said that “Ray” was richer than Trump and had recently joined the race. I guessed Michael Bloomberg, but that is apparently not Ray. After pulling up the official list of candidates and much more discussion, we finally learned that he was talking about Tom Steyer the entire time. 

Almost all six of the volunteers for Buttigieg from Elon have experienced a similar phenomenon. People here understand how important their opinion is but sometimes don’t want to validate it with facts. It’s either that, or they’re tired of everyone in the world knocking on their doors. Maybe it’s a little of both!