Why does iowa have caucuses

Census Bureau. For a long time, that was a surprisingly difficult question to answer. In , , Iowans participated in the Republican caucus and , participated in the Democratic caucus , both held on Feb. That works out to By comparison, in , turnout averaged As of Jan.

That can also be confusing. Consider the Republican caucuses , which historically have combined a nonbinding secret preference vote along with the delegate-selection process.

In , state GOP officials first declared Mitt Romney the winner of the preference vote by eight votes, then two weeks later said Rick Santorum had won by 34 votes. Like so much else with the caucuses, that depends on how you look at it. Since , there have been 10 contested Democratic caucuses ; in six of them, including the four most recent, the declared caucus winner ultimately was nominated.

On the Republican side, there have been eight contested caucuses in that span, but in only three cases was the caucus winner ultimately the nominee. The exceptions were Bill Clinton, who placed fourth in , and John McCain, who came in fourth in Tom Harkin was the overwhelming caucus favorite, so the other Democratic contenders mostly ignored the state. And McCain was just votes behind third-place finisher Fred Thompson.

According to census data , minorities account for less than 10 per cent of the population in Iowa. By comparison, about 27 per cent of the U. Kedrowski said whichever candidate garners the most support after the first alignment could claim victory, but a candidate who performs better than expected could claim victory too.

In the past five contested primaries, the winner of the Iowa caucuses has gone on to be the Democratic nominee. In the 12 Democratic caucuses that have been held in Iowa since , nine times the top delegate winner in the state has ultimately been the nominee.

But only three U. Bush and Barack Obama. This year, there are 1, precincts in Iowa, with an additional 99 satellite precincts set up.

Caucus organizers are expecting an enormous turnout and are hoping to surpass the , participant record set in World Canada Local. Trump did the reverse: He lost Iowa, but won New Hampshire and then the nomination. And this plays out in several interacting ways: The media hypes up the Iowa results, branding candidates as winners and losers based on how they performed there.

So the winners get tons of excited coverage, but the losers become afterthoughts. And, particularly in multi-candidate fields, winning media coverage is hugely important. A poor Iowa performance will likely mean fewer campaign donations and endorsements, which makes it more difficult for a candidate to stay in the race.

Voters in other states — especially those trying to make sense of complex, multi-candidate fields — can take the Iowa results and the media coverage of those results as cues about which contenders can actually win. Accordingly, poll results in other states can change quickly after the Iowa results sink in. The candidates naturally take all this into account, and so many of them invest huge amounts of time and money to try to do well in Iowa.

This shrinking of the field is a process known as winnowing. And all of these amplify each other: This behavior from candidates further assures the media that the caucus results are really important, which justifies even more coverage of Iowa.

And vice versa. Could you give me some examples about how Iowa has shaken up past contests? Supporters of then-Sen. Why has Iowa been granted so much power?

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