In just a couple of days, America's "formal" presidential election season begins in a big way with the Iowa Caucus. If I had a dollar for everyone who
has asked me, "what's a caucus and how does it differ from a primary?", I'd be able to retire.
It is therefore with pleasure that I offer a baker's dozen-worth of questions-and-answers on what's about to happen in the Hawkeye State.
PLEASE NOTE THAT WHAT FOLLOWS IS TAKEN VERBATIM FROM AN ARTICLE THAT RECENTLY APPEARED ON THE cqpolitics.com website of CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY:
1. So what is a presidential precinct caucus, anyway?
A caucus is essentially a meeting of local political party activists who convene
to express their candidate preferences. As is the case in most caucus states,
Iowa’s precinct meetings start a multi-tiered process that will culminate at
the state party conventions with the final selection and allocation of the
state’s delegates to the national Democratic and Republican Party conventions.
2. How does a caucus differ from a primary election?
Unlike a caucus, a primary is carried out in a virtually identical manner to
a general election contest, with participants going to polling place or,
depending on state election procedures, voting at home for their preferred
candidates. A primary election attracts a broader swath of the electorate, in
part because it requires a shorter time commitment. A caucus takes longer to
conduct and tends to attract dedicated party activists.
3. It seems as though the Iowa caucuses are always the first event of the presidential nomination season. Why is that?
The precinct caucuses
have been the kickoff presidential nominating event since 1972, when the
Democratic Party scheduled them for Jan. 24. Since 1976, Democrats and
Republicans have held their caucuses on the same date. Until that era, Iowa’s
caucuses had been extremely low-profile and weren’t the media circus they are
today. But the 1972 and 1976 Democratic contests helped turn the precinct
caucuses into a major force in presidential selection: the
stronger-than-expected performance by South Dakota Sen. George McGovern in the
first of those events and by former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter in the latter
helped boost both to the party’s nomination, which in turn turned future Iowa
precinct events into media magnets.
4. Where are these caucuses held?
In a wide variety of locations such as schools, churches, community centers, public libraries and even private homes. Democrats and Republicans will hold caucuses in each of Iowa’s nearly 1,800 precincts; in some places, both party’s caucuses will be held in the same locations.
5. How many people show up to caucus?
It depends on a contest’s competitiveness, but usually about 10 to 20
percent of a party’s voters will participate in the caucuses. About 124,000
people participated in the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses. [There were no Republican contests that year because President Bush was unopposed for renomination.]
6. Who can participate in a precinct caucus?
Any Iowa resident can participate, provided he or she is 18 years of age or will be by November 4, 2008, the date of the general election.
To participate in a party’s caucus, a voter must have previously
registered as a member of that party or chooses to register with the party on
caucus night. Any prospective participant must show up at the caucus site by
7. Isn’t Jan. 3 awfully early to hold precinct caucuses?
Yes, it’s by far the earliest date for the Iowa caucuses -- so early in fact, that if occurs just two days after New Year's Day. This could be a problem for lots of football fans who may want to watch the Orange Bowl game between Virginia Tech and Kansas. This early date is a result of the accelerated "front loading" of the presidential nominating schedule: the 2008 Iowa caucuses were originally penciled in for Monday, January 14. They shifted to the earlier date because other states moved up their nominating events and impinged on Iowa's first-in-the-nation status. Previously, the Iowa caucuses had been held no earlier than January 19, the date on which they were held in both 1976 and 2004.
8. So what exactly will happen on the evening of Jan. 3?
Republican and Democrats voters will gather that evening at their respective
precinct caucus locations, ostensibly to elect delegates to the county conventions in March and to conduct other party business.
The caucus process is fairly simple for the Republicans, who will cast a
nonbinding straw vote for their preferred candidate before moving on to other
party business.
The Democratic process is more complex. Caucus attendees will divide up into
candidate preference groups. Generally speaking, a preference group needs to
have 15 percent of caucus attendees to be considered “viable” — meaning that
the group is eligible to elect delegates to a county convention. So a candidate
at a precinct caucus that has 100 attendees would need the support of 15 people
to form a viable candidate preference group.
After caucus attendees divide up into preference groups, those who are in
non-viable groups or are not committed to any candidate are allowed time to
realign with other candidates’ groups. After this period of realignment, county
convention delegates are allocated among the candidate preference groups, and
the results are then phoned in to the state Democratic Party.
9. What can you tell me about the results that are reported?
You’ll see a raw vote total for the Republicans. In the 2000 Republican
caucus, for example, George W. Bush received about 36,000 of the approximately
89,000 votes that were cast in the straw poll -- 41% of the total. Bush
out-polled publisher Steve Forbes [30%], former ambassador Alan Keyes [14%], and conservative political activist Gary Bauer [9%].
Arizona Senator John McCain, who bid for the 2000 nomination but did not
campaign in the Iowa caucuses that year, received 5%.
The Democrats report their caucus results in terms of each candidate’s
projected delegate strength at the state convention in June — using a
calculation known as State Delegate Equivalents [SDE]. There’s a reason for
this. The January 3 precinct caucuses will elect delegates to county conventions
that are of different sizes; the county convention in Carroll County, for example, will include 155 delegates who will be
elected January 3, while the county convention for Tama County will
include 85 delegates who will be elected January 3.
The state party weights each county’s delegate allotment to the June state
convention based on its raw Democratic vote in the 2004 presidential and 2006
governor’s contests, compared to the statewide Democratic vote. Carroll and
Tama will have differently sized county conventions, but they actually have the
same delegate allotment [16] at the state convention — which is fixed at 2,500
delegates — because both counties each gave the same cumulative total of votes
in 2004 to Democrat John Kerry and in 2006 to Democrat Chet Culver. That complicated scenario explains why the party
releases the results as SDEs.
In the 2004 Democratic caucuses, Kerry’s reported total of 37.6%
reflected his anticipated delegate strength at the state Democratic convention.
It did not mean that Kerry was supported by 37.6% of all Democratic
caucus attendees.
10. If the purpose of the Iowa caucuses is to elect delegates to the
county convention, then why do the results of the Iowa precinct caucuses receive so much national attention?
Because the media widely interpret the precinct caucuses as an important
early test of each candidate’s viability and his or her campaign organization,
even though no national convention delegates are selected at the event. The
caucuses have become such a media magnet that the intense focus on who won and
who lost — or, more accurately, who exceeded expectations and who did not meet
them — can help make or break candidates. And this comes well before the overwhelming majority
of primary and caucus voters elsewhere in the nation have had an opportunity to
vote or even weigh in about their choices.
11. How often does the winner of the Iowa Precinct caucuses go on to win the nomination?
Most, but not all of the time. In 2004, John Kerry hurdled to Democratic
front-runner status after a late surge in Iowa propelled him to victory. Eight
In 2000, George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, won the Republican Iowa caucuses and Vice President Al Gore easily won those on
the Democratic side. Bush lost to McCain eight days later in New Hampshire,
In 1988, Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole and Missouri Democratic Rep.
Richard A. Gephardt won the Iowa caucuses, but neither won their party's nomination. Dole lost out to George
H.W. Bush, the current president’s father, while the Democratic nomination went
to Michael S. Dukakis.
12. Can a presidential candidate fare poorly in Iowa and still recover and win the nomination?
Historical caucus results have spawned a conventional wisdom that there are
“three tickets out of Iowa." In every contested Iowa caucus since 1972, only once has a presidential candidate finished worse than third and then gone on to become his party's presidential candidate. At that time -- the
Third-place Iowa finishers who went on to win their party’s nomination
include Bush in 1988, when he lost to Dole and religious broadcaster Pat
Robertson in Iowa but went on the win the nomination and defeat Dukakis in the
general election.
Dukakis also finished third in the Iowa caucuses. But in this case, his showing was portrayed as a success. First-place
finisher Gephardt and Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, the runner-up, represented
states that border Iowa
Got all that? If not, don't worry. Its taken some of us years just to figure out just where in the heck Iowa is.
But you've got to admit: there is something about Iowa. Let the games begin!
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