Iowa Caucuses: Who Will Win?

Monday February 3rd Democrats in Iowa will gather in school gymnasiums, community centers, homes and other shared spaces to select candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

A quick review: In all Democratic Presidential nominating contest there are two rules:

1. A candidate must get more than 15% of the support of the voters to qualify to get any delegates
2. The delegates are proportionally awarded to the candidates that qualified to receive delegates

The Iowa process is a caucus not an election. In a caucus people meet in small groups and debate who they think should be the nominee. You know who your neighbor voted for. About two hundred thousand people will participate. (Iowa population: 3.1 million).

This year’s process in Iowa will work as follows:

To participate in the caucus a person must be legally able to be a registered voter in the state of Iowa on November 3rd 2020, and must be a registered Democrat, or must register as a Democrat at the caucus. Some caucuses are “precinct caucuses” and a person must be a resident of that precinct to participate. Some are “satellite caucuses” and can be attended by any person. (There are actually plans for out-of-state satellite caucuses for Iowans who can’t be in state to participate, in 13 other states and Washington D.C. plus France, the UK and weirdly Georgia).

At the first stage in the process voters are selecting delegates to the county convention…