US primary elections
Understanding Iowa’s caucuses

Kicking off America’s 2016 primary-election season in Iowa

Graphic detail

AMERICA’S primary-election season starts tonight when the parties’ loyalists in Iowa say who they want their presidential candidate to be at 1,681 Democratic and Republican caucuses (precinct meetings) across the state. At each Republican caucus a speech will be given in favour of each candidate. A vote is then taken and the results tallied and sent to the state party (the formal allocation of a candidate's delegates to the party's national convention take place at meetings in the spring). The Democrats do things a bit differently. Speeches are made, but then the supporters of each candidate, as well as those who remain “uncommitted” after the speechifying, huddle in groups indicating their preference. If a candidate gets less than 15% support at a caucus their devotees can leave or support another candidate (so the second preferences of Martin O’Malley’s supporters will be important tonight).

The voters in the party-primary contests skew to the left and right and away from the more moderate electorate that turns up at the presidential election in November. In Iowa, the last time a contested caucus was held on the Democratic side, in 2008, 54% of those who participated described themselves as “liberal”, compared with 19% of the electorate at the November election in the state. At the Republican caucuses, 88% said they were “conservative”, compared with 37% in November. Women had a higher participation rate than men in the Democratic caucuses; the Republican ones had lots more rural voters and evangelical Christians. According to the Iowa Caucus Project at Drake University, the participation rate of conservative Christians in the caucuses is twice that of the general election. Iowa’s population is 91% white. The Democratic caucuses reflected the state’s racial profile, but the Republican ones were 99% white. The project has also found that over half of caucus participants in 2008 made their mind up about whom to support only in the month before voting. Around 5% were still undecided when they turned up at the caucus, so there will still be a smattering of voters open to persuasion from the candidates’ campaigns.

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