The Iowa caucuses are the first major contests in each presidential election. However, caucuses differ from the primary elections held in most states in two important ways.
First, a caucus involves a local group meeting, rather than a polling place to cast ballots.
These meetings are essentially gatherings of neighbors to conduct the local business of a political party. A caucus is held for each of Iowa’s 1,765 voting precincts at the same time on the same day. It isn’t open all day for people to drop by and cast a ballot.
Second, caucuses are held by political parties, not the state of Iowa.
While there are some laws governing caucuses, each caucus is conducted by party volunteers according to the rules of that party. That means only members of the parties can participate. But anyone can join the party, even on the day of the caucus.
The Presidential Preference Poll
Caucuses are conducted by each political party every two years. Their purpose is to conduct local party business such as electing a precinct chair and delegates to the party’s county convention.At every other caucus—every four years—the parties also conduct a presidential preference poll.
The results of the presidential preference poll are used to allot delegates for each candidate, which plays a part in the nomination process at the national party convention.
Because Iowa’s caucuses come first on the primary election calendar, the results of the preference poll draw a lot of national attention.
Candidates who do well, usually placing in the top three, often gain momentum in their presidential campaigns. Candidates who finish poorly sometimes drop out of the race after Iowa.
Who Can Participate?
Any Iowan who is eligible to vote in the 2024 general election can participate in a caucus.Participants must be registered with the political party holding that caucus and live within the precinct. Iowa law allows participants to register to vote and affiliate with a party on the day of the caucus. So it’s possible to show up, sign up, and take part in the caucus.
By law, a voter can participate in only one caucus per election cycle.
Caucus Times and Locations
Caucuses are usually held in schools, community centers, churches, or other public buildings. Some precincts combine to hold their causes in the same location. Attendance at a caucus can range from a handful of people in rural precincts to several hundred in more populous areas.Republican and Democratic caucuses will be held on Jan. 15, 2024, at 7 p.m. Caucuses begin on time.
For dates, locations, and times of other party caucuses, visit that party’s website.
What Happens at a Caucus?
Caucuses are organized by each precinct chairman, who must find a suitable place to meet. Years ago, many were held in church basements and even living rooms. A few still are. Now, many meet in schools, which are required by Iowa law to provide space.
Some counties combine multiple precincts into a single location to make it easier for the organizers. For example, Gary Nystrom, GOP chairman for Boone County, gathers the county’s 15 precincts into three locations: Boone, Ogden, and Madrid. Typical attendance at those venues is about 1,000, 500, and 300 respectively, Mr. Nystrom said.
Some churches will allow caucuses to meet in their facilities if both parties will do so, making it a bipartisan effort. Gloria Mazza, GOP chair for Polk County, said she was able to partner with her Democratic counterpart on some caucus locations in 2016 when one of them found an available church but couldn’t use it unless both parties used it. Though held in the same location, the caucuses met separately.
Each party’s caucuses are held on the same date and time and usually last about 90 minutes. Caucus locations are listed on each state party’s website.
Caucuses typically have a sign-in table for registered party members and a separate registration table for voters who would like to affiliate with the party that day.
- Call to order
- Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance
- Election of a caucus chair
- Presidential preference poll
- Break to count votes
- Other party business
- Vote to adjourn
Vote Counting and Results
Ballots are counted immediately in full view of the caucus members.Major parties record the votes on paper and electronically. Electronic results are submitted to party headquarters immediately and paper results are delivered later.
Totals are announced by state party officials.
Each party’s rules differ regarding the result of the vote.
For the Iowa Republican Party, the vote totals are used to proportionally allocate the state’s delegates to the Republican National Convention. Those delegates are obligated to vote for their designated candidate on the first nominating ballot at the national convention, even if the candidate has dropped out of the race.
However, if only one candidate’s name is placed for nomination at the Republican convention, all Iowa delegates must vote for that candidate.
Why Iowa Matters
The Iowa caucuses have provided the first real-world test of presidential candidates since 1972. Iowans view the caucuses—along with early primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada—as a vetting process that helps narrow the field for future primaries.There is no requirement to register with the state to run for president in Iowa, and there is no requirement to gather signatures to get on a primary ballot. Anyone can simply show up in Iowa and begin campaigning.
Candidates typically travel extensively throughout the state, meeting with small groups of voters in coffee shops, Veterans’ halls, and living rooms, and attending county fairs, parades, and other local events.
This gives Iowans extraordinary access to candidates in the early stages of their campaigns.
Critics complain that Iowa, a small, rural state with a 90 percent white population, isn’t representative of the entire country.
Proponents of the caucus system point out that it democratizes the process by allowing candidates to enter the race without spending large sums of money, and that the political debate at the caucuses themselves is an example of democracy in action.
From Obscurity to Political Staple
Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer and former governor, wanted to be president, so he went to woo Iowa.Thanks to a change in Democratic Party rules, the Iowa caucuses had recently moved to January, making them the nation’s first presidential primary contest. Seeing the opportunity for an early victory on the road to the White House, the largely unknown former governor of Georgia chose to begin his campaign in Iowa, the mother of all flyover states.
People thought he was crazy.
State party leaders told Mr. Carter he was wasting his time. Exactly one reporter showed up to cover his first campaign event. But over the next several months, the affable southerner practically took up residence in the Hawkeye State, and something unexpected happened.
Iowans started to like him.
“He could talk to people about any sort of crops, weather, machinery, the hardships, the value of a family farm. He was good at that and so was his wife,” Tim Kraft, President Carter’s 1976 Iowa campaign manager, told PBS some 40 years later.
Veteran political reporter Judy Woodruff recalled: “He was not afraid to go in and walk right up to people who had never set eyes on him, had no clue who he was, put out his hand and say, ‘Hi, I’m Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer from Georgia, former governor, and I’m running for president, and I’m going to be elected president.’ He had a lot of self-confidence.”
The relative lack of press attention ensured greater access for reporters who did cover the Carter campaign.
“I remember being assigned to cover him at a press conference on Sunday afternoon at the Hotel Fort Des Moines, and I was the only reporter that showed up,” said David Yespen, who was then a young reporter with The Des Moines Register.
“And so I had a wonderful time just chatting with him. He was eating grapes, and he and I were just sitting there on a couple of chairs, just talking, and it’s a lot different than what it is now, a lot smaller,” Mr. Yespen told PBS.
By the time the Iowa caucuses rolled around, Mr. Carter was attracting large crowds and being followed by the national press corps.
Mr. Carter didn’t win the Iowa caucuses. He placed second to Uncommitted, meaning the share of delegates who would attend the Democratic National Convention with no obligation to vote for a particular candidate.
Even so, the Iowa caucuses lifted Mr. Carter into the national spotlight where he parlayed that success into the 1976 Democratic nomination and went on to become America’s 39th president.
That election also lifted the Iowa caucuses out of heartland obscurity. What had once been a quaint political tradition became a fixture in presidential politics, the first test of a candidate’s true appeal to the voters.
Nowadays, it doesn’t seem foolish to begin a presidential campaign in this state with more cows than people. It seems foolish not to.
Yet to non-Iowans—or those not residing in the few other states that hold caucuses—the institution remains a mystery. If it isn’t an election and it isn’t a political convention, what is it?
A Gathering of Neighbors
“Iowa nice” is a term you hear a lot in the Hawkeye State, and for good reason. Iowans really are nice. They’re friendly, mostly agreeable, and neighborly. Nearly all of them live out in the country or in small cities and towns. Des Moines, the capital, is home to just 211,000 people.Caucuses make sense in Iowa because they’re essentially a gathering of neighbors. The behind-the-scenes work of electing local chairmen and working on the party platform usually interests only those with a strong interest in party politics. But the presidential preference poll boosts attendance considerably, especially in hotly contested election years.
Each precinct has about 3,500 registered voters, including all political parties and independents. In 2020, about 176,400 people took part in Democratic caucuses and 32,000 in Republican events. That made for an average attendance of about 100 for Democrats and 18 for Republicans.
In 2016, the GOP caucuses recorded record attendance of more than 186,000 statewide. Democrats had their largest turnout in 2008 with some 240,000 participants.
Retail Politics
Given that Iowa doesn’t require presidential candidates to register or gather signatures to appear on a primary ballot, candidates simply show up in the state, gather some folks at a coffee shop or church basement, and make their pitch.As a result, most campaigns in Iowa start small. Initial events may attract no more than a few dozen people. Most will visit each of Iowa’s 99 counties at least once, sometimes twice. They attend the state fair and dozens of county fairs, parades, carnivals, football games, meet-and-greets, or anywhere they can give a speech and shake a few hands.
That takes more time than money for most candidates, requiring dozens of trips to Iowa and endless hours of shuttling between small towns. “The only game in Iowa is the long game,” Chip Saltsman, who ran Iowa campaigns for Mike Huckabee and Mike Pence, told The Epoch Times. Former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd moved to Iowa while campaigning there in 2008.
This boots-on-the-ground approach gives Iowans an unusually high degree of access to presidential candidates. Voters are used to seeing all the candidates in person if they care to, often more than once. They listen, ask questions, and talk to their friends about what they heard.
Many Iowa voters won’t decide on who to caucus for until they’ve at least heard each candidate speak.
“So far I like Mike and Karen [Pence] the best,” a woman from Holstein told The Epoch Times in August, five months ahead of the 2024 caucuses. “But I haven’t met Nikki Haley yet.” Former Vice President Mike Pence subsequently suspended his presidential campaign on Oct. 28.
At caucus time, these politically attuned voters gather with other party members and decide who to vote for.
Campaigning is allowed right up to the last minute.
“In my precinct in 2016, we had [Donald] Trump, [Marco] Rubio, [Rick] Santorum, and Ben Carson show up that night, and we only allow three to five minutes [each],” Ms. Mazza told The Epoch Times.
“I think combining the caucus and the presidential primary vote is exactly what grassroots democracy is about,” Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa Republican Party, told The Epoch Times.
When all the votes from all the precincts are tabulated, candidates are allotted a share of Iowa’s delegates to the national party convention in proportion to their vote total in the caucuses. The delegates are obligated to vote for that candidate on the first ballot of the national nominating convention.
That means winning the Iowa caucuses isn’t as significant as winning the primary in a winner-take-all state, where all of the state’s delegates are committed to the highest vote-getter.
Win, Place, Show
Iowa state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican from Cedar County, said Iowa plays a key role in the American electoral process because the state serves to “winnow the field” of candidates.“You can be anybody from anywhere and run for president, but then Iowans’ job is to vet those folks,” Bobby Kaufmann, son of Jeff Kaufmann, told The Epoch Times.
The caucuses are a crucial first test of how well a candidate’s message will hold up with politically engaged voters versus man-on-the-street opinion polls.
“If you can finish in the top three, you typically have a ticket out of here,” Bobby Kaufmann said, “and if you can’t, then you’re done.”
Historically, the Iowa caucus results are only marginally accurate in predicting each party’s eventual nominee and mostly inaccurate in predicting who will become the next president.
Since 1976, seven of 10 winners of the Democratic caucuses have become the party’s nominee. Just three of eight Republican winners have gone on to claim the nomination. Those totals don’t include years in which an incumbent president ran unopposed.
Just three of seven presidents elected since 1976 were Iowa caucus winners: Presidents Carter, Obama, and George W. Bush.
“You guys haven’t picked a winner in a long time, I hate to remind you,” Mr. Trump told attendees at a 2016 Iowa rally. “Come on, Iowa, will you get with it, please?”
Mr. Trump finished second in Iowa that year but won the White House.
Mitt Romney, who narrowly lost to Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in 2012, leveraged his second-place finish into a successful campaign.
“This is obviously a bit like a baseball game, first inning. Well, it’s a 50-inning ball game. I’m going to keep on battling all the way and anticipate I get the nomination when it’s all said and done,” Mr. Romney told Fox News.
Iowa can also dash a politician’s aspirations.
“I count the past year as one of the most rewarding in a career of public service. Unfortunately, I am withdrawing from the campaign tonight,” Mr. Dodd from Connecticut said after placing seventh in the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucuses.
Caucus Critics
Iowa’s outsized role in presidential elections has left some observers and candidates questioning the value of the caucuses.Iowa is a relatively small state. Its population of 3.2 million ranks 30th in the nation and is among the least diverse. Iowa is 90 percent white and more than 78 percent Christian. The state’s economy is heavily dependent on agriculture.
The caucuses have also been plagued by reporting glitches, notably in 2020 when Democratic results were delayed nearly a week because of problems with a mobile app that was used to report precinct numbers.
As far back as 2000, Howard Dean, then governor of Vermont, complained about the caucuses in an interview: “If you look at the caucuses system, they are dominated by special interests on both sides and both parties. Special interests don’t represent the centrist tendencies of the American people,” CNN reported.
Mr. Dean went on to compete for the 2004 Democratic nomination, placing third in Iowa.
Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah and ambassador to China and Russia, refused to campaign in Iowa during a 2012 presidential bid.
“I’m not competing in Iowa for a reason. I don’t believe in subsidies that prop up corn, soybeans, and ethanol. I think they destroy the global marketplace,” Mr. Huntsman said while campaigning in New Hampshire.
Others have objected that the entire system is undemocratic because it’s held on a weekday evening at an appointed time, unlike a primary election in which polls are open all day. That scheduling rules out participation by many working people, critics argue.
Yet Iowans defend the caucus system as an example of democracy in action.
Iowa is unique because people here meet with candidates one-on-one in settings such as the Pizza Ranch and living rooms—places that candidates don’t have to pay to rent, so it levels the playing field for all of them “regardless of their financial standing,” Bobby Kaufmann said.
“You don’t just go in, cast a ballot, and leave,” Jeff Kaufmann said. “You talk about the candidate, you debate upon the candidate. The candidates send their surrogates, and even the candidates themselves get to come in and make their case one last time.
“It’s the way the Founding Fathers envisioned it in terms of the people having a choice.”
As with any sort of election, voter turnout can make or break a candidate’s result in the Iowa caucuses, and caucus night surprises are fairly common.
Keenly aware of that, President Trump urged voters to take nothing for granted in the run-up to the 2024 caucuses, despite holding a commanding lead in the polls.
“Don’t listen to that, don’t listen,” President Trump told supporters at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids in December. “Nothing’s over. I’ve seen things that are over and bad things can happen. You got to get to the polls, you’ve got to get in the caucus and you’ve got to do your job and we’re going to win.”
The caucus crowd is aging though.
“A lot of the younger people don’t want to get involved,” Mr. Nystrom told The Epoch Times.
He suspects that the very thing that makes the caucuses interesting—political debate—keeps some voters away.
“It’s hard to get people because there’s some confrontation,” he said.
