Facts About the Iowa Caucus

Every four years, the Iowa caucuses make major news in America. Nowadays, this first-in-the-nation contest among presidential hopefuls is held almost a year before the actual election. Although Iowa is certainly not among the largest and most populous states in the union, it draws a lot of attention because it both starts the nomination process and plays host to the peculiar procedure of the caucus.

What Is A Caucus?

The simple definition of a caucus is the closed meeting of a group of people for the purpose of debate and reaching a decision. This is what happens at the Iowa caucuses does. Members of the Democratic and Republican parties hold closed meetings, where they debate the merits of the candidates for office, hold votes, and attempt to reach a consensus opinion on who to nominate. This is different from a primary, which is a straight election procedure and features no formal, organized debate among voters.

The General Procedure

The actual, specific procedures used by the Democratic and Republican parties for the Iowa caucuses vary. This is because they are private organizations, and the Iowa State Democratic and Republican Parties are entitled to make up their own rules, more or less as they please. However, the two procedures do bear some general similarities. Iowa has 1,784 voting precincts. This is where actual party members gather for debate and voting. The winner of a precinct receives delegates who go on to a county convention. The candidate with the most delegate votes at the county convention then gets to send delegates to both the Iowa state Congressional District Convention and the overall state convention. The formal nomination of a candidate by the state of Iowa takes place at these conventions, but the matter is usually already clearly decided by the results of the precinct-level votes.

Democratic Procedures

At the Democratic caucuses, the precinct meetings open by having attending voters split up into groups, physically and literally representing where they stand regarding candidates. For 30 minutes, these groups are allowed to debate and try to persuade each other to defect. Then a vote is held. Any candidate with less than 15 percent of the attending voters is considered inviable and eliminated from the Caucus. That leaves a number of unaffiliated voters. The surviving groups have another 30 minutes to try to persuade these unaffiliated voters to join them. Then voting is closed. Delegates to the county convention are then awarded on a proportional basis. From there, the process follows the more general procedures already outlined.

Republican Procedures

The Republican procedure differs markedly from the Democratic one in that there is substantially less debate involved. Republican voters arrive at the caucus, listen to some campaigning by designated supporters of the candidates who have been chosen from among local party members, and then vote by secret ballot. There is no second round of voting. The results are used to select delegates, who are sent to the county convention. From there, the procedure follows the general pattern described above.

Importance

The Iowa Caucus is important in the American presidential election process not because of the importance of the state of Iowa, but because of its timing. It is the first major event in the political nomination process of both parties. It is therefore often viewed as being an early indicator of the relative merits of different candidates running for their party's nomination. This is a sometimes dubious view point, however. For example, in 2008, the Democratic nominee and eventual president, Barack Obama, did win the Iowa Caucus. His victory in a state with an overwhelmingly white population led many to take his candidacy seriously for the first time. However, the eventual Republican nominee, John McCain, tied for third place in Iowa. In 1988, neither of the eventual nominees won the Iowa caucus: Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush both came in third in the contest. The real importance of the event is that, as the first event of its kind in the presidential nomination process, it is given an overwhelming amount of attention by the U.S. news media.