Professors declare Iowa “representative”

A University of Iowa professor and a former University of Iowa professor who's now at the University of Missouri have co-authored a study which concludes Iowa is fairly representative, demographically, of the country as a whole.  The research perhaps responds to critics who complain Iowa's Caucuses should not be the lead-off contest in the presidential election because Iowa is "too white and too old."

Read the PR Newswire news release here.  The link in the first paragraph takes you to the academic paper.  The paper by Michael S. Lewis-Beck of the U-of-I and Peverille Squire of the U-of-Missouri begins with these two sentences: "There are perhaps many good arguments for Iowa maintaining its 'first in the nation' status, in terms of the presidential nomination process. The strongest, however, would seem to be an argument that it is representative of the nation as a whole."