The inequalites of the iowa caucus

[tiznow]

Just goes to show you why campaigning face to face with people in small towns is soooo important in iowa, hopefully the campaign HQ wakes up to this fact sooner than later. Ron Paul MUST do bus tours of smaller rural areas and us activists must focus on them more than we are to succeed in iowa.

There is a reason iowa campaigning has always dealt with bus tours traveling to tons of diners and small townhall meetings all over the state this is why.

Also this is a breakdown for the dems i would really like to see a breakdown for # of people per delagate county to county for the republicans in 2004. If i find it I will post.




In this post on MyDD by DesMoinesDem that we mentioned before, the way that an Iowa Precinct Caucus works is explained. The post takes care to differentiate the type of party building activity is from a more traditional one-man-one-vote primary. Using data from the Des Moines Register, we did a breakdown of what counties benefited and what counties were hurt by the caucus system in 2004.

In 2004, 122,193 people attended the Democratic Precinct Caucuses to elect 3000 delegates to the State Convention. This averages out to just under 41 caucusgoers per delegate elected. However, this average wildly differed in every county. In Johnson County, home of the University of Iowa and the most Democratic county in the state, it took nearly 80 caucusgoers to elect one delegate. However, in tiny Fremont County located in the heart of Republican Western Iowa, it only took 22 caucusgoers. When one looks at the number of caucusgoers that it takes to elect a delegate in each county, there is a clear pattern. Caucusgoers in small, rural, Republican counties wield disproportionate power compared to those in more urban Democratic counties. In fact, the people who are most disadvantaged by this are students. Of the four counties where it required the most caucusgoers to elect a delegate, three of them had significant student populations: Johnson, Poweshiek and Story. It is a system that favors the old over the young, the rural over the urban, Western Iowa over Eastern Iowa. It is a method that of selecting a candidate that has a clear bias and to be successful, presidential candidates have to spend a disproportionate amount of energy on less populous rural areas. The full breakdown is below the fold:

1 JOHNSON 79.21276596
2 POWESHIEK 69.8
3 JEFFERSON 68.46153846
4 STORY 65.97674419
5 DECATUR 54.625
6 WARREN 52.19148936
7 POLK 50.74651163
8 WINNESHIEK 49.6
9 DALLAS 49.09302326
10 MADISON 45.4
11 CEDAR 42.55555556
12 JASPER 42.45454545
13 MARSHALL 42.4
14 DAVIS 41.25
15 MAHASKA 40.5
16 WOODBURY 40.18518519
17 MUSCATINE 40.11428571
18 BOONE 40
19 MARION 40
20 BUCHANAN 39.47826087
21 IOWA 39.46666667
22 GREENE 39.41666667
23 WAPELLO 39.3902439
24 CLAY 39.33333333
25 ADAIR 39
26 BREMER 38.65217391
27 PALO ALTO 38.54545455
28 LINN 38.22807018
29 WAYNE 38
30 MONROE 37.875
31 HARDIN 37.63157895
32 WEBSTER 37.34146341
33 HAMILTON 37.29411765
34 LOUISA 37.1
35 WASHINGTON 36.89473684
36 DES MOINES 36.84313725
37 BUENA VISTA 36.8125
38 APPANOOSE 36.76923077
39 SIOUX 36.18181818
40 UNION 35.69230769
41 DUBUQUE 35.60952381
42 ADAMS 35.4
43 KOSSUTH 34.9
44 SCOTT 34.57142857
45 HARRISON 34.5
46 MONONA 34.5
47 KEOKUK 34.4
48 POTTAWATTAMIE 34.27941176
49 JACKSON 34.19047619
50 MILLS 33.3
51 TAMA 33.26315789
52 CLAYTON 33.15
53 RINGGOLD 32.83333333
54 BLACK HAWK 32.72058824
55 GUTHRIE 32.66666667
56 PLYMOUTH 32.47058824
57 VAN BUREN 32.33333333
58 FAYETTE 32.18181818
59 SHELBY 32.11111111
60 IDA 32
61 HENRY 31.84210526
62 CASS 31.75
63 BENTON 31.74074074
64 CHICKASAW 31.5
65 PAGE 30.6
66 CARROLL 30.23809524
67 AUDUBON 30.125
68 HOWARD 30
69 FRANKLIN 29.81818182
70 GRUNDY 29.8
71 WRIGHT 29.69230769
72 CRAWFORD 29.58333333
73 FLOYD 29.16666667
74 CERRO GORDO 28.83636364
75 LUCAS 28.44444444
76 O’BRIEN 28.1
77 JONES 28.04545455
78 CLARKE 28
79 ALLAMAKEE 27.69230769
80 BUTLER 27.23076923
81 DELAWARE 27.16666667
82 WINNEBAGO 26.91666667
83 SAC 26.8
84 LEE 26.51111111
85 DICKINSON 26.5
86 HUMBOLDT 26.5
87 POCAHONTAS 26.5
88 LYON 26.33333333
89 CALHOUN 26.09090909
90 OSCEOLA 25.75
91 MONTGOMERY 25.375
92 TAYLOR 24.83333333
93 WORTH 24.8
94 MITCHELL 23.16666667
95 HANCOCK 23.09090909
96 EMMET 23
97 CHEROKEE 22.69230769
98 CLINTON 22.47457627
99 FREMONT 22.28571429

[DeadheadForPaul]

interesting

[MozoVote]

Iowa's caucuses were designed to have this very effect. It's not worth complaining about. We need to play by Iowa's rules or fish elsewhere.

[tiznow]

the dems do things different than the republicans this whole caucus thing is so damn confusing trying to figure out if these inequalities exist for the republicans or not and they make it confusing for a reason so all us newcomers to caucusing politics have no idea what we are doing to maintain the status quo :)

[j650]

I think the way the Republicans do it is similar to the Iowa straw poll. There are no delegates I believe, candidates are just ranked by # of votes.

[tiznow]

yeah looks like overall it is just a state wide popular vote by straw poll. Good that democratic stuff freaked me out a little bit sorry for the misunderstanding :) Well they can mess with us greatly within the system, but the reported number is the % of popular vote in the state.



Step 1 - Republican party members will meet in one or all of the 1,993 precincts in Iowa, as well as designated schools, public buildings, and private homes to elect caucus delegates. To determine meeting locations, individuals may contact their County Party Chair or State Party Headquarters.
Contact County Party Chairs.
Contact State Party Headquarters.

Step 2 - At the individual Republican caucus meetings, a straw poll is taken by secret ballot to influence the delegate.

Step 3 - One person = one vote. The straw poll is an informal type of voting where the local votes are tabulated to gauge opinion.

Step 4 - The tabulated votes from the local precinct straw polls are sent to the state party headquarters to announce the winner of the straw poll popular vote, and hopefully influence the selection of delegates. This concludes the Republican participation in the caucuses.

Next, the Republican party will begin the process of selecting the 56 delegates that will represent the state of Iowa.

Step 5 - After the caucuses in each county, a County Convention will be held to select the delegates for the District Convention, using the influence of the straw poll as a guide.

Step 6 - After the County Convention, a District Convention will be held in which all of the counties in that political district will decide on just 3 delegates to represent each district. There are 6 districts in Iowa for a total of 18 delegates.

Step 7 - The State of Iowa Republican Convention will decide upon a total of 23 more delegates, along with the 3 additional delegates per district, for a sum total of 41 delegates who will represent the candidates in the National Convention, at which the official Presidential Candidate for the Republican party will be decided.

[Scribbler de Stebbing]

MN is even worse with the caucus system. There is no binding vote on caucus night. You have to vote the delegates on up without binding them to vote in any manner.

ANYways, if the national campaign wanted to take something over, they should have taken over getting Ron Paul out and about in Iowa, not put a halt to the grassroots calling campaign. I'm questioning the wisdom of having donated at this point, given the heavyhanded tactics of pulling the plug on the grassroots phoning.

[MozoVote]

On the phoning, I think the HQ should have let the grassroots handle the lead up to Ames, and then picked up the reins. The enthusuasm of volunteers is the greatest asset of RP, and stepping in just a few days after Spooner launched, will leave some bruised pride.

[tiznow]

Don't give up yet scribbler, I know we are raring and ready to go. still 25 days till the straw poll plenty of time, if we are still waiting this weekend than I'd start to get worried. Honestly as an iowan I won't be taking much time phone banking I let others help with that instead I will be doing door to door canvasing with a straw poll flyer to go along with literature about Ron Paul. We will be beginning this starting this wednesday.

[Scribbler de Stebbing]

Door to door is great, but you can't hit all the caucus attendees that way. The lists with phone numbers for all the caucus attendees were available but they have been confiscated by the bureaucracy.

Nothing to do with bruised feelings whatsoever, but NO CALLING is going on, and it could have been.

I definitely give you kudos, tiznow, for going door-to-door. You're a great person.

[tiznow]

I wouldn't be so sure no calling is going on. I have met and worked with their new iowa hire on the meetup group level and she is spectacular i'm guessing she is doing some calling to test out the market and likely to come up with some sort of organized format for you all to use. I'd like to repeat again this is pure guessing on my part I really have no clue what is going on. :) From my impression you have competent people that are working their buts off to ensure everyone is on the same page once the program is rolled out. Also i think we have enough volunteers raring and ready to go that you all will be able to roll through the call list in no time. We still have plenty of time and lots of dedicated people to work on this keep that in mind. Also it's my belief closer to the straw poll you actually contact the people the more effective it will be as well.

Also as far as grassroots support goes running around and randomly doing events on their own is much different than people from all over the country with different backgrounds etc. cold calling iowans. I believe it is very important that everybody gets a good recommendation of how they should go about it and be on the same page. For most iowans this will likely be the first time they have ever heard the name Ron Paul and as we know well the first impression is usually the greatest one.