Revisiting the 2004 Iowa Caucus

In January of 2004 I was still new to Wisconsin, glued to the Presidential race, and had a ton of free time. While spinning my wheels trying to figure out what to do with myself in this new city I became curious about how this whole "caucus" thing they kept bragging about in Iowa really worked. Being just a border crossing away I decided I might as well take advantage of the geography. When I returned from the caucus I wrote about the whole thing on my former blog - "Natural Selection of Accidents." That long defunct blog is about to be shut down so I have been tediously moving all 700 plus entries to a new home. In the meantime, with the 2008 Iowa Caucus just three weeks away, I thought it would be beneficial to dig out that blog entry for dane101 readers so you can read about the experience and maybe join me in questioning the logic of having such a ridiculous system kick-off our election season.

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I ended up in Iowa City home of the University of Iowa at the Democratic caucus. I was happy with my decision because I am mostly interested in the youth vote this election. I think they will be pivotal no matter who the candidate ends up being.

I was an observer in precinct three. Precinct three is made up mostly of college students and there are roughly 1,200 registered Democrats. Their caucus was held in the Iowa Memorial Union. I knew something odd was happening as I entered a room designed to hold around 60 people and it was obvious by the long line down the hall that there were more than 60 people. Each candidate needs at least 15 percent of the supporters in the room to receive a delegate. The caucus mathematician declared the number to be 240 even though, by the end of the voting, the tally actually ended up being 249 and they are supposed to round up to 250. It should be noted that the mathematician caucused with the Kucinich supporters.

The other interesting aspect I noticed right away was the energy of the John Edwards supporters. It was like Edwards had just given them a pep talk. The John Kerry folks seemed to vary between being strung out or slightly disinterested. The Dennis Kucinich supporters gave off the impression that they were excited, but slightly desperate. The Howard Dean supporters seemed to vary between being a little too comfortable or, like the Kerry supporters, slightly disinterested. The Edwards supporters were talking to everyone even before we were all marched down two flights of stairs to a room that could contain everyone. The energy I had expected from the Dean supporters had some how been completely stolen by the Edwards supporters.

A representative for each candidate explaining why his or her candidate should be the one who is chosen as the Democratic nominee started the process. There were no supporters for Lieberman or Gephardt at the caucus I attended. Like I mentioned above in order to qualify for round two a candidate needs 15 percent of the supporters in the room. According to the incorrect 240 number in order for a candidate to qualify for the second round they needed at least 36 supporters. If the math was done right they actually would have needed 38 supporters. Anyway, the first tally went like this:

Howard Dean = 84

John Kerry = 65

John Edwards = 40

Dennis Kucinich = 37

Wesley Clark = 15

Al Sharpton = 5

Uncommitted = 3

(hmmm...interesting...if the right numbers were used Kucinich wouldn't have made it to the next round, oh well). The next goal is for the leading candidate supporters to get the invalid candidate supporters to come to their team. This went on for quite some time. There is nothing that says the four delegates need to be given to four different candidates, but it was fairly obvious that the man in charge (the Kucinich supporter), thought it would be nice if they could give a delegate to Kucinich for the purpose of making a statement. It was obvious, because he pretty much said as much. It didn't really matter because while the majority of the Edwards and Kucinich supporters lobbied hard for their candidates, only four or five of those in the Dean and Kerry camps put any effort into it. It was rather depressing. The numbers that came during the second round were a true testament of the effort that the Dean and Kerry sides put into getting more support during that particular caucus.

Howard Dean = 84 (no change)

John Kerry = 64 (lost one!)

Dennis Kucinich = 51

John Edwards = 50

So each of those four candidates ended up earning one delegate. If the Dean team tried harder, they may have been able to get to 120 supporters, thereby earning two delegates and shutting either Kucinich or Edwards out. However, based on my observations of the Edwards supporters, I don’t think any of them would have budged. The majority of the original Edwards supporters had these 15-20 page books that outlined every single Edwards policy. None of the other supporters came armed with anything close to that. I was surprised that the Dean supporters didn’t try harder to woo the Clark supporters.

It is unfortunate Dean has let himself falter. He was doing really well by not attacking the other candidates during the debates. There must have been some bad campaign management going on in the back halls of Dean HQ when it was decided that attack ads were a good idea. I talked to two of the Edwards supporters and they both said they started paying attention to the race because of the same reason, they were curious about the Dean hoopla. By dating Dean, they fell in love with Edwards.

We were just finishing up our caucus around 8:30 p.m. when my cell phone beeped with a text message. I had been sent the news that Kerry was in the lead with Edwards close behind and Dean way behind in third. I took the opportunity to do some of my own polling once the caucus was complete. I asked 15 Dean supporters whom they would vote for if they had to choose between Kerry and Edwards. These were my results:

Edwards = 11

Kerry = 2

Wouldn’t vote = 2

I really wanted to give the two who said that they wouldn’t vote a slap, but it’s a free country, they can hand it back over to Bush if they want to. However, it says something about Edwards, he has the same appeal to youth as Dean. Kerry may end up alienating them because he has the stigma of being a beltway politician and those kinds of politicians generally don’t pay attention to the youth. If Dean doesn’t pull off a win in New Hampshire and at least second in South Carolina, I hope Kerry and Edwards don’t forget about the kids. They are energized! In a student majority precinct that usually gets five percent of it’s registered Democrats, more than 20 percent showed up this time! That is huge!