Go ahead and try. It gives the voters a good laugh. And the candidates feel they must go along, even though Iowa and New Hampshire possess less than 2 percent of the U.S. population. One reason the candidates will be spending just about all their time there is that those two states account for about a third of all the media coverage in the entire primary season. The reason is not profound.
Somebody has to be first.
The curtain has to go up somewhere. And nobody wants to miss an opening night. A lousy mimeo machine. After the precinct caucuses come the district caucuses and then the state caucus. And in between each, a great deal of information has to be printed up and handed out.