"The Iowa Scam"

[Diraker]

http://www.slate.com/id/2181008/

The undemocratic caucuses are a terrible way to choose a presidential candidate...

<snip>

It's only when you read an honest reporter like Dan Balz that you appreciate the depth and extent of the fraud that is being practiced on us all. "In a primary," as he put it, "voters quietly fill out their ballots and leave. In the caucuses, they are required to come and stay for several hours, and there are no secret ballots. In the presence of friends, neighbors and occasionally strangers, Iowa Democrats vote with their feet, by raising their hands and moving to different parts of the room to signify their support for one candidate or another. … [F]or Democrats, it is not a one-person, one-vote system. … Inducements are allowed; bribes are not." One has to love that last sentence....

I try and watch the news but it's all electioneering. Anyway I agree with the article even though it's tone is a bit snarky. The caucuses are a joke.

[Gnioss]

I dont really even understand what a caucus is. Is there where the parties decide who gets to run as a democrat or a republican? I never really understood the significance of Iowa.

[Timestretch]

I dont really even understand what a caucus is. Is there where the parties decide who gets to run as a democrat or a republican? I never really understood the significance of Iowa.

It is just the first state to hold a primary, so if you win in Iowa you get a boost in popularity and news coverage. People like to vote for winners, so if you can make a good showing early you will be taken more seriously in other states' primaries.

Iowa is the first one, New Hampshire always the second primary.

In reality it is just a chance to get more news coverage by doing well in the caucus.

[Timestretch]

In a caucus, you basically get everyone in a big room. Supporters of Hillary stand in one corner, Obama the other, Edwards in another, etc. There are calls from all sides trying to persuade people to change their allegiance, and the smaller support groups (Biden, etc) eventually realize they can not win and add their numbers to one of the larger groups.

[Konrad]

I used to be active in the Iowa Republican Party when I was in school there...and the caucus was absolutely insane. It's sort of what you would imagine the popular elections in ancient Rome to be like. And believe it or not...Iowans are much more active in and knowledgable about politics than the vast majority of people I've met in other states.

[Timestretch]

I know how much you love Wiki....so here is a more advanced answer to your question.

Republican Party process
For the Republicans, the Iowa caucus follows (and should not be confused with) the Ames Straw Poll in August of the preceding year. Out of the five Ames Straw Poll iterations, 1987 is the only year in which the winner of the Ames Straw Poll has not gone on to win the Iowa caucus.

In the Republican caucuses, each voter casts his or her vote by secret ballot. Voters are presented blank sheets of paper with no candidate names on them. After listening to some campaigning for each candidate by caucus participants, they write their choices down and the Republican Party of Iowa tabulates the results at each precinct and transmits them to the media.[1] The non-binding results are tabulated and reported to the state party which releases the results to the media. Delegates from the precinct caucuses go on to the County Convention, which chooses delegates to the District Convention, which in turn selects delegates to the State Convention. Thus it is the Republican State Convention, not the precinct caucuses, which select the ultimate delegates to the Republican National Convention in Iowa.


Democratic Party process
The vote is literally determined by where each voter stands.

The process used by the Democrats is more complex than the Republican Party caucus process. Each precinct divides its delegate seats among the candidates in proportion to caucus goers' votes.

Participants indicate their support for a particular candidate by standing in a designated area of the caucus site (forming a "preference group"). An area may also be designated for undecided participants. Then, for roughly 30 minutes, participants try to convince their neighbors to support their candidates. Each preference group might informally deputize a few members to recruit supporters from the other groups and, in particular, from among those undecided. Undecided participants might visit each preference group to ask its members about their candidate.

After 30 minutes, the electioneering is temporarily halted and the supporters for each candidate are counted. At this point, the caucus officials determine which candidates are "viable". Depending on the number of county delegates to be elected, the "viability threshold" can be anywhere from 15% to 25% of attendees. For a candidate to receive any delegates from a particular precinct, he or she must have the support of at least the percentage of participants required by the viability threshold. Once viability is determined, participants have roughly another 30 minutes to "realign": the supporters of inviable candidates may find a viable candidate to support, join together with supporters of another inviable candidate to secure a delegate for one of the two, or choose to abstain. This "realignment" is a crucial distinction of caucuses in that (unlike a primary) being a voter's "second candidate of choice" can help a candidate.

When the voting is closed, a final head count is conducted, and each precinct apportions delegates to the county convention. These numbers are reported to the state party, which counts the total number of delegates for each candidate and reports the results to the media. Most of the participants go home, leaving a few to finish the business of the caucus: each preference group elects its delegates, and then the groups reconvene to elect local party officers and discuss the platform.

The delegates chosen by the precinct then go to a later caucus, the county convention, to choose delegates to the district convention and state convention. Most of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention are selected at the district convention, with the remaining ones selected at the state convention. Delegates to each level of convention are initially bound to support their chosen candidate but can later switch in a process very similar to what goes on at the precinct level; however, as major shifts in delegate support are rare, the media declares the candidate with the most delegates on the precinct caucus night the winner, and relatively little attention is paid to the later caucuses.

[Aradorn]

iirc only 2 candidates have won elections where they won the first set of primaries (i wish i knew where i saw this but it was pretty interesting)

[Diraker]

Well both a primary and a caucus are methods to pick delegates who pledge to vote for a particular candidate. But it's in the hows where a primary is different than a caucus.

[Mourne]

Is the Iowa Caucus over yet?

[Riley]

History also suggest that the winner of tonight's caucuses will be well positioned to wind up as the party's nominee. Of the eight contested Iowa Democratic caucuses since 1972, the winner has gone on to win the nomination five times. The same holds true for Republicans as the winner of three out of the five contested caucuses has become the eventual nominee.

Washington Post.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010302982_3.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008010303030)

[Diraker]

Somewhat related and taken from The Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/30/AR2007123002287.html?nav=rss_politics

Vote Your Conscience. If You Can.


By Shankar Vedantam
Monday, December 31, 2007; Page A03

Two sociologists and a mathematician recently conducted an experiment that provides an intriguing window into the presidential candidate selection that begins this week. Matthew Salganik, Duncan Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodds had a large group of people rate 48 songs. Based on these ratings, the researchers produced a list of the best songs.

They then had eight other large groups of people evaluate the same songs, with one difference: In each of these "parallel universes," people knew how others in their group were evaluating the music. Did the eight groups come up with the same list of the best songs? No. When people knew how others thought, this changed how they thought.

Since the people in the first "control" group had nothing to go on besides the songs, their ratings were measures of quality. But in the other eight groups, quality played a much smaller role in determining a song's success. Rather, network dynamics -- the mathematical patterns that govern how ideas spread when a large group of people share complex interconnections and simultaneously influence others and are being influenced themselves -- explained why some songs became popular.

Did the eight groups exposed to peer pressure agree with one another? Again, no. Each came up with different lists of the best songs.

The experiment, published in Science, suggests that when large networks of people evaluate something together -- and it does not matter whether we are talking about songs or "American Idol" contestants or presidential candidates -- their conclusions are not only powerfully shaped by the views of others, but by the network that binds them together. The Iowa caucuses, which involve people watching one another and moving from one candidate's camp to another, have different network properties than a primary where voters don't have such real-time feedback.

Watts, a sociologist at Columbia University, said his research challenges central beliefs we have about why some musicians become stars and some politicians become presidents. Quality matters, but when voters intensely watch one another, the success of candidates depends at least as much on network dynamics as it does on the quality of the candidates themselves. Because network dynamics are not governed by intuitively simple rules of cause and effect -- depending on where they are in a network, people with strong opinions might end up with little influence, while the weak opinions of others get greatly magnified -- networks regularly produce outcomes that are partly arbitrary. Each of the eight music "universes" started out the same, but for no good reason, each went off in its own direction.

Once a primary is over, real life does not allow you to go back and rerun the race a second time. But if you could, the music experiment and other research suggests you might arrive at a different result, even though the candidates and voters start out the same. This is disturbing -- if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic primary or Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination, wouldn't you like to believe that running the race over would give you the same result?

"I am comfortable with the idea that the outcomes we get are often largely arbitrary," Watts said. "We think there is something we can call quality and it is intrinsic to people and books, and it is timeless and the results we see in the world reflects this quality. If you find it disturbing that that is not how the world works, you should not become a sociologist."

The real world provides ample evidence for the first part of the music experiment. Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire play an outsize role in determining the winner of a presidential primary for no better reason than that they get to vote before everyone else. What is impossible to see in real life is that the same candidate may not win if you were to run the race over. What causes a Clinton win in one "universe" and a Barack Obama win in another?

In a new paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Watts and Dodds debunk the idea that influential people drive races one way or the other. The decisive factor, they show in a series of mathematical models, is not the presence of influential people but people who are easily influenced. Random, insignificant events are vastly magnified by networks of such malleable people influencing one another, and this tilts the race one way or another. Blind chance plays a big role.

Once a winner is declared, however, politicians, voters and the media construct a narrative of how that outcome occurred -- they usually point to a set of pivotal characters and crucial turning points. Watts said that these after-the-fact explanations are like explaining a forest fire based on the first spark and a handful of pivotal trees, rather than on the complex relationship between wind, temperature, humidity and fuel.

Most people accept that hurricanes, earthquakes and forest fires can be triggered by random, insignificant events that are greatly magnified by complex networks. We know there is nothing unusual about the pebble that starts an avalanche -- most rolling pebbles are insignificant, but a tiny few have giant consequences.

Seeing a presidential election in those terms, however, is troubling: It means that, every four years, we entrust our future to a roll of the dice.

[Mourne]

Seeing a presidential election in those terms, however, is troubling: It means that, every four years, we entrust our future to a roll of the dice.

Yeah. :(

[Diraker]

Well I wouldn't take it that far because that would be too cynical but, for me, there is definitely a huge random factor. I think though that some people sort of take better advantage of these random factors and that these actions can sway an election in a certain direction. I do agree with the notion though if say we can go back in time and do a retake, that things would turn out differently.

[Mourne]

How closely related are the Clinton and Bush families? I haven't looked into it but have heard different times from different places that their families go way back. If they're butt-buddies that's funny to me how we've basically been under an empire since Bush Sr. (1989-present) If Hillary somehow manages to pull off a win it'll be even longer for the Clintonian-Bushian Empire!

Seriously though, if Clinton actually wins the presidency I'll officially be scared.

[Mutt]

Obama will win the democratic nod

[Mourne]

Obama will win the democratic nod

Although I prefer Duncan Hunter or Ron Paul, I'd still be glad if Obama was the dem primary.

[Diraker]

I don't think there's any history regarding the two families. IIRC Bill Clinton's father was a traveling salesman who died when he was young...not really the privileged life that the Bush family had. And for me, my biggest issue is judicial nominees so Clinton would be just fine with me. I think the only republican I wouldn't be scared of (in this regard) is McCain. I think he would appoint and nominate decent judges as would any of the democrats. One more pro-religionist supreme court justice and we'll see abortion banned, school lead prayer back in public school, etc. Also the president gets to appoint federal judges too so it's not only about the supreme court.

[Konrad]

There is absolutely no way that you can support Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul and be happy about Obama being elected...they are so fundamentally opposed on their main issues, and no, the war in Iraq is not Ron Paul's main stance.

[Mourne]

Um, yes it is possible. I'm not voting democrat regardless. I hate Hillary though. If a democrat is in office I'd prefer any of the other nominees to Hillary. I didn't say I'd be happy if Obama got elected president though. The reason I'm glad he stands a better shot at this point than Hillary as the primary is because I hate Hillary.